VIETNAMESE police have discovered more than 1,000 human foetuses in freezers at an apartment in the capital city.
Police made the shocking discovery in the Ha Dong district of Hanoi, following a tip off about a group of people seen carrying black bags in the area.
Citing the Kinh te & Do thi newspaper, the Vn Express news portal said police they monitored the group and later tracked them going to the apartment with the bags.
They later raided the apartment and found two large freezers filled with the black bags.
Checks later revealed they contained human foetuses and four people were detained for questioning.
The freezers and the foetuses have since been placed at a district funeral home pending investigations.
Initial police investigations revealed that the four suspects often collected aborted foetuses from clinics and garbage dumpsters in the city and arranged proper funerals for them.
They have been doing such funerals in Hanoi's Thanh Oai and Soc Son districts and in Nam Dinh Province.
However due to the great distance between these areas, the team had been storing the foetuses inside freezers before arranging the funeral.
Although police have said the case does not seem to be criminal in nature, there were environmental concerns about the way the foetuses were handled and stored.
The Vn Express said that according to health authorities, Vietnam ranked among countries with the highest rates of abortions worldwide.
The Mothers and Children Health Department under the Ministry of Health recorded 14 abortions for every 100 births in the country in 2018.
Among the reasons for the high abortion rate, which is legal in Vietnam, are baby gender selection and the lack of sexual health education.
Premarital sex remains a taboo in Vietnam with young women facing harsh backlash if they got pregnant out of wedlock.
Experts have also said that the lack of sex education in Vietnam has resulted in some relying on abortion as a form of birth control.