Daughter in cellar for 24 years
A woman has told police that she was held prisoner in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.
Lower Austria police said in a statement that the 42-year-old woman had been missing since August 29, 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten following a tip-off.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said the 73-year-old father had been taken into custody.
In a chronology of events outlined in a statement, police said the woman had apparently sent a letter a month after her disappearance asking her parents not to search for her.
During police questioning, she told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984.
During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused by her father and gave birth to seven children, the statement said. In 1996, she gave birth to twins but one died several days later because it was not appropriately cared for. Her father had then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the statement said.
Police said the woman appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.
One of her children, a 19-year-old girl, is now in hospital in the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten in very serious condition.
Police said the father has been arrested but had not confessed.
Gerhard Sedlacek, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in St Poelten, said the surviving children - three boys and three girls - are aged between five and 20. DNA tests are expected to determine paternity of the children.
Police in the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten have arrested a 73 year old man who is alleged to have kept his daughter, now aged 42, locked in the cellar of his house in Amstetten since 29th August 1984. 

The man, identified by police as Josef Fritzl, is alleged to have started sexually abusing his daughter, named as Elisabeth Fritzl, when she was eleven years old, and to have subsequently fathered seven children by her. One of the children, one of a set of twins born in 1996, died of neglect shortly after birth and the body was burned by the father. The surviving six children, three boys and three girls, are currently aged between 5 and 20 years old. Three of the children were left on Josef F.'s doorstep and subsequently raised as the adoptive children of Josef F. and his wife, Rosemarie, while the other three children were left with their mother and never saw daylight until she was discovered. Rosemarie F. is said to have been unaware of her husbands' activities.

Police became suspicious when a 19-year-old daughter, Kerstin, was taken to hospital with a mysterious life-threatening illness, and the family's medical records were checked. Police say that Elisabeth F. appeared to be "greatly disturbed" psychologically, and only agreed to talk after the authorities assured her that she would not have to have contact with her father, and that her children would be cared for.

The news has shocked Austria, recalling the case of Natascha Kampusch who was kidnapped aged 10, and escaped after being held in a "dungeon" for eight years in 2006.

DNA tests are to be undertaken to confirm the paternity of the children.