CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) _ A U.S. Air Force sergeant returned home from an overseas mission to find his wife and two young children dead, an Air Force spokesman said Monday.

British press reports said an autopsy found that the English woman died of natural causes about 10 days ago and her 2-year-old boy and 1-year-old girl had died of starvation.

Cambridgeshire police spokeswoman Anne Speechley said the reports were probably correct but had not been confirmed by the officer in charge of the case.

Frank Randall, an Air Force spokesman at the RAF Mildenhall base, said Sgt. Gregory Voelcker, 24, returned from temporary overseas duty Sunday night. Randall said where Voelcker had been and for how long was ″operational restricted data.″

The Cambridge Evening News said Voelcker, from Friendswood, Texas, had been in Athens, Greece. He is an airborne maintenance technician with the 6988th Electronic Security Squadron, Randall said.

Ms. Speechley said the bodies were found in the family’s remote cottage in the village of Kirtling, 60 miles northeast of London.

Randall was quoted by the Cambridge Evening News as saying that the Air Force has a policy of visiting families of servicemen on duty out of the country. Randall said the last contact with Voelcker’s family was on June 12.

″Contacts are about every two weeks and they would have been getting a visit soon if the husband had not come home,″ Randall was quoted as saying.

Air Force spokeswoman Jan Hauger said Voelcker was ″being comforted on the base by people who are trained in that.″