A Paris court on Friday handed a 20-year jail term to a Chinese nanny who killed and cut up her employers after their two-month-old baby died in her care.

The woman, 34-year-old Hui Zhang, had admitted killing the couple, Ying Wang and Liangsi Xui, during a violent row at her home after they learned the infant boy had did.

Hui, 34, said she was acting in self-defence as the furious parents of the dead baby attacked her and her boyfriend Te Lu, also 34, with a butcher's knife. Te, who was a co-defendant in the macabre case, was acquitted.