Destitute Filipino mother kills children

from the Age

Police in the Philippines say poverty appears to have driven a jobless woman to kill her three young children by giving them toilet cleaner to drink before she killed herself the same way.

Senior Superintendent Raul Sandoval said the children, aged from two to four, died before reaching hospital, while their 32-year-old mother died while being treated.

He said the woman, Janeth Ponce, left a suicide note in her one-room shack in northern Laguna province's Magdalena township.

She asked relatives to forgive her and care for her seven-year-old son who was sleeping in his grandmother's house at the time of the incident.

Police said her husband, a construction worker in Manila, had not sent money for a month.

One third of 90 million Filipinos live below the poverty line of $US1 ($A1.25) a day.