A woman flew from Istanbul to Paris with an infant girl hidden inside her hand luggage, Air France has said.

The airline said the child, travelling without a ticket, was discovered on board the flight on Monday night.

An airport source told AFP news agency that the woman was a resident of France who was in the process of adopting the child, from Haiti.

The airline notified the French authorities but prosecutors decided not to press charges.

The woman was in the transit zone in Istanbul but was prevented from boarding her flight with the child, the source told AFP.

She then bought a new flight ticket and hid the child in a bag.

Once on board, she placed the child at her feet under a blanket, but the girl needed to go to the toilet and was noticed by other passengers, the source said.

It’s not clear how old the child was – one source said she was four years old, another that it was a one- or two-year-old baby.

“The cloth bag belonged to a woman sitting at the back of the plane. At one point she opened the bag and her neighbour on the other row of seats saw something moving inside. He alerted flight attendants, who then discovered a baby,” a passenger named Vincent told French news website Planet.fr (in French).

The woman and the girl have been held at Charles de Gaulle airport while authorities investigate the case.

Source: BBC