Josef Fritzl admits all charges

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering seven children with her, has changed his pleas to guilty on all charges.

Mr Fritzl has admitted rape, incest, murder and enslavement, telling the jury: "I plead guilty to all the charges in the indictment."

He initially denied two of the charges, including murdering one of the children soon after its birth.

The 73-year-old locked his daughter and the children in a cellar for years.

Asked by the judge at the trial in St Poelten, west of Vienna, what had caused him to change his plea, he replied: "My daughter's videotaped testimony," the AFP news agency reported.

"I'm sorry," he added.

The court viewed the testimony from his daughter on Tuesday.

Mr Fritzl lured her into a cellar with windowless, soundproofed chambers beneath their house in 1984.

He imprisoned her there and raped her repeatedly over a number of years.

The daughter and three of the children fathered by Fritzl were kept captive in the cellar until the case came to light in April last year when one of the children became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.

He was accused of murdering one of newborn twin boys his daughter gave birth to in 1996, having failed to arrange medical care for the ailing infant.