Police launch murder investigation after three women stabbed to death at brothel in Vienna

Second murder investigation comes hours after mother and daughter found dead in apartment in city

Police in the Austrian capital have launched a criminal investigation into the incident near the Danube River on Friday evening (AFP/Getty Images)

Police have launched a murder investigation after three women were knifed to death at a brothel in Vienna.

The incident took place in a red light bar in Brigittenau, near the Danube River, on Friday evening.

A witness alerted the force after discovering traces of blood outside the building.

Officers discovered the bodies of three victims with “cuts and stab wounds”, said police spokesman Philipp Hasslinger.

A 27-year-old man carrying a knife, the supposed weapon, was soon arrested in the vicinity of the brothel. Police said officers were set to question the suspect, an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan, later on Saturday.

The force found a fourth woman inside the brothel, who was being questioned by police as a witness.

The identities of the three victims remain unclear.

Brothels are legal in Austria. The one where the incident happened is in Vienna's 20th district, among the city's poorest.

It comes after a 51-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter were found dead in an apartment in the city earlier on the same day.

Officers discovered the pair’s bodies in the Landstraße District, an area in the southeast of the city centre, in the early hours of Friday.

Police said a murder investigation has been launched over the incident.

The woman’s husband and father of the child, a 53-year-old Austrian citizen, is “strongly suspected of the crime”, said the force, as it hunts for the perpetrator.