France has launched a nationwide investigation into why babies in some parts of the country have been born without hands or arms after several new cases were reported this week, the health minister said Wednesday.

Public health agency Sante Publique France said it had identified 11 additional cases of babies born with limb defects between 2000 and 2014 in the rural Ain department of eastern France, close to the border with Switzerland, where seven cases had already reported between 2009 and 2014.

There have also been malformed births in two departments in western France — four in the Morbihan area between 2011 to 2013, and three in neighboring Loire-Atlantique in 2007 and 2008. Ain and Loire-Atlantique are several hundred kilometers apart.