A young man from the northern town of Serres was arrested yesterday on suspicion of having slaughtered his infant son with a carving knife in a frenzied attack during which the baby’s heart was torn out.

Police said Constantinos Antikoglou, 21, who is to be charged today, confessed to having killed the two-month-old boy in the family’s central Serres flat early yesterday while his 19-year-old wife was asleep. Officers said Antikoglou claimed to have been driven to the killing after he lost his job in a Serres confectioner’s shop.

The baby’s body was found by its mother yesterday morning in the flat’s kitchen, covered with a sheet.

Serres coroner Minas Georgiadis said the baby had been stabbed dozens of times in the chest, but the precise number of strokes was impossible to define. “Its heart had been literally uprooted,” he said.