2 nurses in Uruguay charged with killing patients

Two male nurses face murder charges in Uruguay after admitting to killing a total of at least 16 patients in two hospitals in the country's capital, Montevideo, a judge told CNN affiliate Teledoce.

One of the men has been charged with five aggravated homicides, while the other has been charged with 11 aggravated homicides, Judge Rolando Vomero said in an interview with Teledoce, noting that the two men appeared to have acted independently of each other.

The authorities are also charging a woman as being an accomplice in one of the murders, he said.

According to Vomero, the two male nurses both said they killed the patients because they did not want to see them suffer. But not all those killed were terminally ill, he added.

The killings took place at the hospitals of Maciel and La Espanola in Montevideo, the judge said