A 32-year old woman murdered her three young daughters by forcing them to drink a toilet bowl cleanser before drinking the same toxic liquid herself in a province south of Manila, police said today.
Neighbours found the woman sprawled on the ground beside her dead children, aged 2 to 4, at dawn inside their rural home, police in Laguna province, told reporters.
The woman was found still holding the toilet bowl cleanser bottle.
"Her neighbours tried to save her but she died on the way to a hospital," a police spokesman said, adding poverty could have driven the woman to kill three of her four children.
The woman's 8-year-old son was staying with her mother in another village. Her husband was a construction worker in Manila, he said, adding the woman was depressed for days and was talking to neighbours about ending her life due to poverty.
About a third of the Philippines' nearly 90 million population live on less than a dollar a day.
Rising inflation, which hit a 17-year high of 12.5 per cent in August from a year ago, and a falling peso, which has lost more than 11 per cent against the dollar so far this year, have made life more difficult for most people in the Southeast Asian country.
Reuters