Austria cellar daughter awakes from coma

The daughter of Austrian dungeon father Josef Fritzl whose admission to hospital exposed the scandal has woken from her coma, doctors said today.

Kerstin Fritzl ,19, is one of seven children that Fritzl fathered by raping his daughter Elisabeth ,42, whom he kept imprisoned for 24 years in rooms under his home.

A hospital statement said Kerstin had been awakened from a medically-induced coma and released from the intensive care unit where she was taken on 19 April.

Medical reports last month gave Kerstin little chance of survival saying she was critically ill, although no details of what she was suffering from were released.

Fritzl's dark secrets were revealed after Kerstin became ill and he was forced to take her for hospital treatment.

It emerged that he had imprisoned Elisabeth in the specially built dungeon under his home in the town of Amstetten as a teenager, then repeatedly raped her.

She had seven children, one died in infancy, three were brought up in Fritzl's house and three kept in the dungeon with their mother.