BEIJING (Xinhuanet) -- Austria police announced Thursday a young woman found in a yard in a residential area north of Vienna has been identified as the schoolgirl who vanished eight years ago triggered a massive search extended into neighboring Hungary.

The woman told police her name was Natascha Kampusch and said she had been kidnapped and kept under a garage for years, according to media reports.

Kampusch vanished on her way to school on March 2, 1998. Her disappearance sparked a huge manhunt and became one of the biggest police mysteries in recent Austrian history.

Armin Halm, spokesman for Austrian's federal police, said Kampusch had been identified by a scar on one of her arms from an operation she had when she was younger.

Police had found Kampusch's passport in the house. Results of a DNA test are expected later Thursday, but "we are quite sure it's her," said Halm.

The suspected kidnapper, identified by Austrian media as 44-year old telecommunications technician Wolfgang Priklopil, died after throwing himself in front of a train Wednesday night.

It is not clear what the kidnapper's motives were. Police say he had no connection to the girl's family and there had been no ransom demand.

The young woman says that she listened to the radio and read newspapers during her captivity in the village of Strasshof, but was never allowed by her captor to leave the garage.

Austrian media report that the room looked like a dungeon and had an entrance measuring just 50cm by 50cm. They believe it was blocked with a soundproof safe whenever the kidnapper left the scene.

"She is white-pale, looking as if she had been out of the light of day for a long time, but she articulated well and could read and write," the Austria Press Agency quoted a police investigator as saying.

APA reported that the woman burst into tears when she met the man believed to be her father, Ludwig Koch, at the police station on Wednesday night. There were no indications the woman suffered sexual abuse, investigators told APA, according to Reuters.

Psychologists cited by a local radio station said she probably suffered from "Stockholm syndrome," a condition in which captives develop a positive relationship with their captors over time.