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

The victims, a Syrian woman and her daughter, who had been missing for a number of months, were detected on Friday. The cooling units were concealed behind a plasterboard wall in the apartment, located in the city of Innsbruck.

A pair of males, a Austrian man, 55 and his 53-year-old brother, were detained in the month of June. The elder brother, a work associate of the Syrian woman, told police last week that there had been an incident—but disputed intentional killing.

Informing the media previously, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office stated the brothers were being kept in custody on "strong suspicion of homicide".

Personal details of those involved have been withheld by authorities, in following Austrian law.

Their going missing was first reported by the cousin of the mother, who lives in Germany, on July 25, 2024.

Police revealed the 55-year-old suspect informed them at the time she had gone on an long journey with her child to see her family in Turkey.

Her bank card was then found to have been used abroad repeatedly.

Yet when police entered the woman's home, her cellphone was located.

An individual also reported overhearing a loud noise in the dwelling, and shouts of "mama" on the occasion the mother and child were thought to have disappeared.

A wider official inquiry was started, with authorities discovering several texts sent from the woman's phone—among them a notice of quitting to her company and communications to the male associate.

Authorities said a four-figure sum was also sent to the individual.

A senior police official told media representatives on that day that a storage facility had been secured before the mother and child went missing and a cooling unit had been placed there.

The brothers extracted the cooling unit from the facility on the day the mother and daughter disappeared, Tersch revealed. And a seven days after, they purchased another freezer.

Authorities say they believe this indicates the deaths were intentionally orchestrated.

"The reason for their demise was not identifiable due to the state of decomposition of the remains," Tersch commented.

The prosecutor's spokesman—of the public prosecutor's office—noted the specific order of occurrences is yet to be determined, but the bodies were professionally hidden and not discovered during a previous house search.

While the brothers were arrested in the summer, it was not until the 12th of November that the elder brother acknowledged an incident and to hiding the bodies. He disputes any intent to kill, officials confirmed.

In a related development, his brother admitted to a cover-up but disputed awareness of a killing.

The brothers are at this time in custody awaiting trial in detention centers in separate locations, situated at a distance.

Through a combined announcement, the nation's official for women's affairs and the top legal representative said the "suspected killing of two... constitutes the swift and cruel conclusion of a mother and child and exposes a cruel system".

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

"Femicides are a profoundly embedded and society-wide problem that we must combat firmly."