Bone fragments unearthed at a former Jersey children's home being investigated over alleged child abuse show signs of murder, island police have said.
Deputy chief officer Lenny Harper said charred bone parts found in a cellar "indicate a homicide" with the remains possibly cremated in a fireplace.
Tests on milk teeth also discovered at the scene reveal two different sources, he said, raising th
e prospect that more than one child could have been killed in the underground chamber.
The news comes less than a week after it emerged the fragment of "skull" that initially sparked the search at Haut de la Garenne was now believed to be a piece of wood or coconut shell.
Mr Harper said a total of 30 bone fragments and seven teeth had now been found in one of the cellars.
Speaking in Jersey, Mr Harper said: "Of the six teeth we have sent to the UK, five of these would not be able to come out naturally before death. Only one shows signs of decay. The rest have so much root attached they could not have come out naturally before death.
"Experts say they have come out of more than one mouth."
Detectives originally found 20 bone parts in the cellar, but a widening of the area being sieved located another 10. Some of the bones had been cut.
Mr Harper continued: "A lot of bones appear to have some degree of burning to them, a number were found in and around where we believe was a fireplace in the cellar area."
Tests to age the suspected victims have been inconclusive, with estimates ranging from pre-Second World War to as recent as the 1970s and 1980s, police said.
He continued: "We have sent the bones off to be tested and if the results show they died in the 1950s or 1960s or more recently we would say it is a homicide inquiry."
Mr Harper added that the list of suspects had now grown from around 40 to 70.
"They will all be questioned and most of them will be arrested," he added.
He also hit out at the treatment of some of victims that had come forward.
He added: "Whatever else, we have a dead child or dead children in that cellar. We do not know how they got there or how they died, but we do know in that cellar we have a dead child."
Scores of people came forward claiming they were abused in underground punishment rooms where they were drugged, raped and beaten.
Forensic teams uncovered a network of four underground chambers where they found the teeth and bone fragments.
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