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The deceased of a mother aged 34 and her 10-year-old daughter have been discovered inside freezers in an apartment in western Austria.

The deceased, a Syrian woman and her daughter, who had been unaccounted for for several months, were uncovered on Friday. The freezers were hidden behind a false wall in the flat, located in the Innsbruck area.

A pair of males, a 55-year-old Austrian and his 53-year-old brother, were detained in the month of June. The 55-year-old, a colleague of the female victim, told authorities last week that there had been an accident—but disputed murder.

Speaking to reporters previously, a spokesman for the legal authorities stated the pair were being held on "high likelihood of intentional killing".

The identities of those implicated have not been released by authorities, in compliance with national regulations.

The vanishing of the mother and child was initially flagged by the female victim's relative, who is based in Germany, on 25 July 2024.

Authorities said the woman's colleague informed them at the time she had gone on an extended trip with her child to visit her parents in Turkey.

The victim's bank card was then found to have been used abroad on multiple occasions.

Yet when officers entered the victim's residence, her smartphone was located.

An individual also stated overhearing a commotion in the dwelling, and cries of "mama" on the occasion the pair were thought to have disappeared.

An expanded police investigation was started, with investigators discovering various messages sent from the mother's device—such as a job termination message to her workplace and communications to the male associate.

Officials said a four-figure sum was also moved to the suspect.

The head of the State Criminal Police Office informed media representatives on Tuesday that a storage unit had been leased before the vanishing and a cooling unit had been positioned inside.

The brothers extracted the appliance from the unit on the very day the woman and her child went missing, Tersch revealed. And a shortly afterward, they purchased an additional appliance.

Investigators say they consider this points to the deaths were premeditated.

"How they died was not identifiable due to the condition of the victims," the official stated.

Mayr—representing the state—noted the specific order of occurrences is not yet known, but the remains were expertly concealed and were not found during a prior examination.

Although the suspects were taken into custody in June, it was only on November 12 that the elder brother admitted to an occurrence and to concealing the remains. He rejects any plan to cause death, investigators confirmed.

Meanwhile, his younger brother confessed to a cover-up but denied knowledge of a killing.

The pair are currently in pre-trial detention in detention centers in two Austrian cities, approximately 189 kilometers away from each other.

In a joint statement, the nation's official for women's affairs and Justice Minister stated the "reported homicide of mother and child... constitutes the abrupt and violent termination of a mother and child and exposes a cruel system".

"Females of all ages are being killed due to the mere fact that they are of the female gender," they added.

"Femicides are a profoundly embedded and widespread concern that we must fight resolutely."