Tests show Austrian fathered daughter's children

AMSTETTEN, Austria (Reuters) - DNA tests have shown that Austrian Josef Fritzl, who had kept his daughter prisoner for 24 years and abused her sexually, was the father of her six surviving children, police said on Tuesday.

"The result... shows that the six children, which the unfortunate Elisabeth Fritzl gave birth to in the basement, have all been undoubtedly fathered by her own father, the now 73-year-old Joseph Fritzl," Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigation unit in Lower Austria, told a news conference.

Elisabeth had seven children in her 24 years of imprisonment, but one of them died shortly after birth.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, writing by Karin Strohecker)