A woman and her partner have been arrested in Portugal after two young French boys, aged four and five, were found alone and in tears by the side of a road in the country's south. The children were discovered on 19 May near Alcacer do Sal, a town roughly 100 kilometres south of Lisbon, by a passing driver who noticed them screaming and running towards his car. The boys were carrying backpacks with food and water but had no identity documents with them.

According to accounts the children gave to police, they had been blindfolded by their mother and stepfather and told to search for something in a nearby forest — at first believing it was a game. The driver who found them fed the boys before alerting authorities. Portuguese police subsequently launched an investigation and began tracing the mother's mobile phone, which showed she had travelled with the children from France through Spain and into Portugal.

The boys' biological father had reported them missing from their home in Colmar, a city in the Alsace region of eastern France, on 11 May, after the mother — who holds custody of the children — had left without explanation. A pan-European alert was issued. The arrested pair, a 41-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man, were located when their car was spotted outside a café in Fátima, a city about 180 kilometres north of where the children had been found. Portugal's National Republican Guard confirmed the arrests but has not formally identified the two individuals.

The couple are being investigated on suspicion of domestic violence, exposure to danger, and abandonment. Both Portuguese and French authorities have opened parallel inquiries, though investigators say they have not yet reached firm conclusions. The boys have been placed in the care of Portuguese child protection services. Authorities confirmed the children are safe and uninjured.

The case has drawn widespread attention to the vulnerability of young children in international custody disputes and the importance of cross-border cooperation in missing-persons cases. The swift coordination between French police, who traced the mother's movements via her phone, and their Portuguese counterparts proved critical in locating both the children and the suspects within days.