A father who drowned his sons aged 8 and 5 in a hotel bathtub before hanging himself confessed in a suicide note he wanted revenge on his wife.

Horrified hotel housekeepers in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, on the Mediterranean coast, found the brothers’ bodies after letting themselves in with a pass key.

The boys’ 45-year-old father was found dead hanging from a makeshift noose tied to the bathroom door in the triple killing on Saturday, 11th March.

Neither the boys, their father, nor their mother has been named by police or in local media.

Before he died, the father – a Madagascan national – had written a suicide note saying he had killed his sons to hurt his wife.

Investigators say he first doped his sons with sleeping pills before drowning them in the bath.

His wife is quoted in local media as saying: “He threatened me before that he would carry out the crime out of spite, and he said, ‘I will take revenge on you and kill your children’.”

She added: “There were continuous disputes, he would threaten to kill my children, he wanted to take revenge on me.”

Police are not believed to be looking for any other suspects, according to local media,