Stockholm  - Testimony in the trial of a German woman charged with beating to death two toddlers in Sweden in March on Thursday centred around whether the children's mother had discussed the case with relatives and her partner after the attack.

The defence also questioned the ability of the 23-year-old mother, who sustained injuries in the attack, to accurately remember details of the March 17 attack in which her children - aged one and two - were repeatedly beaten to death with a heavy object.

The accused, a 32-year-old student, being tried in the district court in Koping, west of Stockholm, has denied she attacked the children and their mother in the small town of Arboga in central Sweden.

The mother was injured in the attack and suffers impaired hearing and vision. She identified the German woman as the attacker in an earlier hearing.

Prosecutor Frieda Gummesson on Thursday questioned the police officer who conducted interviews with the mother during her convalescence, and procedures to shield her from the media and from reading about the case.

Detective inspector Anders Pommer said the family had been told not to discuss the attack, and that the mother's memory of the attack improved over time.

The mother's father and two sisters testified Thursday that they had not discussed the attack with her.

Defence lawyer Per-Ingvar Ekblad noted that the police did not monitor all conversations and suggested that it was possible that the mother and her partner, a former boyfriend of the accused, may have discussed the case when they were alone.

Emergency service staff who attended to the mother at the scene, meanwhile, testified that she had been unconscious and they were not able to communicate with her at the time.

Last week, Professor Sven-Ake Christiansson, one of Sweden's leading experts on memory, told the court that the mother's memory was impaired and it was "unlikely" she could have recalled some of the events in such detail after sustaining the blows to her head.

With no DNA evidence linking the accused to the crime scene, the prosecution has said it will summon 56 witnesses to back up its case.

The prosecution has described the attack as a crime of jealousy, with the German woman having refused to accept that her ex-boyfriend had begun a new relationship with the mother of the two children.

The woman was extradited to Sweden at the end of April. The trial began a week ago.

The children's parents and their mother's partner have given testimony. The partner has told the court of his brief relationship with the German woman, saying he had broken it off in early 2007 but she had refused to accept this. (dpa)