A MAN on his way to Southampton is being held by police in France over the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl.

According to prosecutors, Zbigniew Huminski has admitted to killing the girl, known only as Chloe, shortly after snatching her from a playground close to her home.

She was found in woodland in the northern town of Calais on Wednesday, prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi added.

Mr Valensi said Huminski, who had past convictions and was supposed to have been expelled from France, was intoxicated at the time of the attack, and that he violently abducted the girl after she sprayed a water pistol at him while playing in the park.

Prosecutors say the 38-year-old Polish man was heavily under the influence of alcohol and is currently in custody at Coquelles – at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel.

Speaking at a press conference Mr Valensi, the prosecutor of Boulogne-sur-mer, revealed how the suspect said he was in Poland until yesterday morning but had gone to Calais because he wanted to come to Southampton to stay with his sister.

Chloe had been playing with a friend after getting back from her dance lesson on Wednesday afternoon when a man “appeared and grabbed her, forcing her to get into a red car”, French prosecutors said.

Police were alerted at 3.30pm and search teams found her naked body in the Dubrulle forest 90 minutes later.

Police revealed there were signs the little girl had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

The little girl’s mother, named only as Isabelle, has told French newspaper Le Parisien how she had only left her oldest daughter just a few minutes in the playground while she popped into her house to change her young son.

In tears she said: “When I got back the stepfather of her friend told me straight away: ‘Someone has taken Chloe.’ “He said he didn’t know who and that he didn’t recognise him.

“I then ran around the building calling out ‘Chloe’. I was crying.”

She told how she caught sight of her little girl lying on the ground behind some bins before a man, who she only saw from behind, snatched her and took her away in his car.

Isabelle said: “It was too fast. I was a few metres away with my other children but there was nothing I could do. I was paralysed.

“What I don’t understand is whether he had done something to her before because she didn’t cry out or struggle.

“I started screaming: ‘Chloe’s been taken, Chloe’s been taken’ I was in panic.

“I don’t know how I will recover.

“Chloe was an adorable little girl, always smiling. She loved life.”

The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, said the town was in mourning and called for a memorial march this evening.

The flags at the town hall are being flown at half mast.