Woman held after her newborn baby found in drain

A Spanish woman has been arrested for attempted murder after her two-day-old baby was discovered inside a building’s drains in Alicante and painstakingly rescued by firefighters, police said.

“A neighbour alerted the fire service that they could hear meowing coming from a waste water pipe, thinking that it was a cat that had become trapped,” police in Alicante, eastern Spain, said.

However, the firefighters and police discovered instead “the cries of a newborn baby and immediately proceeded to dislodge and save the child… who still had the umbilical cord attached” and was wrapped in plastic bags, the police said.