Two schoolgirls have admitted to fatally stabbing a 12-year-old girl after luring her into woods

Two schoolgirls aged 12 and 13 have confessed to stabbing a 12-year-old girl to death in Germany, police said on Tuesday, in a case that has shocked the country.

The victim, known only as Luise, went missing on Saturday afternoon after leaving a friend’s house near the town of Freudenberg, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Police said the girl was stabbed more than 30 times with a small knife. 

‘The child died as a result of numerous knife wounds and the resulting loss of blood,’ Koblenz prosecutor Mario Mannweiler told a press conference, adding that there was ‘no indication of a sexual offence’.

The two girls ‘made statements about the matter and in the end admitted the crime’, said Florian Locker, head of Koblenz police’s homicide department.

The girls and Luise knew each other, Mannweiler said. 

He declined to give further details because the suspects are too young to be held criminally responsible for their actions in Germany, where the age of criminal responsibility starts at 14. 

Investigators have yet to locate the knife or knives used in the crime.

Source of data and images: dailymail