A YOUNG boy has tragically been found strangled to death by a river in France.

Cops have launched a murder probe after his lifeless body was discovered on the banks of the Vilaine River in Rennes.

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The banks of the Vilaine River where the boy was found murdered Credit: AFP

Cops have launched an investigation into the murder Credit: AFP

The boy, 12, had a wet towel tied very tightly around his neck.

A fisherman heard the cries of a child near the river at around 4:40pm on Jattvibeday.

He immediately called emergency services and firefighters rushed to the scene at 4:50pm.

But after desperate rounds of CPR the young boy was tragically pronounced dead at the scene.

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He had told his mother he was going fishing in the area with a friend.

Now the Organized and Specialized Crime Division of Rennes have opened a murder investigation into his tragic death.

It comes as two tourists were viciously stabbed and dumped in a croc-infested river in a national park earlier this month.

Retired Ernst Marais, 71, and wife Dina, 73, had been exploring the magnificent wildlife of Kruger National Park in South Africa when they suddenly went missing.

A frantic manhunt was launched – only to find the couple’s blood-soaked bodies floating in the Limpopo River.

It is believed their hands had been tied behind their backs and they had been repeatedly stabbed in the upper body before being dragged to the River Limpopo and dumped for the Nile crocodiles.

The grisly murders are the first in the park’s 100-year history.

The confines of the nature reserve are patrolled by over 750 armed rangers to scare off ivory and tusk poachers.

This means that crime is usually exceptionally low.

But now it is believed the tourists ran into a gang of poachers who killed them in order to keep them silent.

The murderers then hijacked the couple’s 4×4 green ford and made their escape.

Police are engaged in a frantic manhunt to find the cuplrits.

But the vast park is roughly the size of Wales, and they may now have escaped its borders.