A 22-year-old man was shot dead by specialist French police on suspicion of killing five members of his family, including three children, on Wednesday, according to reports.
He was allegedly armed with a long-barrelled rifle and a Japanese sword as he held his relatives hostage in a house in Douvres, Ain, in eastern France from Tuesday evening, Agence France Presse reported.
Le Progres, a regional newspaper, reported that the man was shot around midday on Wednesday by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN), which specialises in hostage situations and counter-terror, after police arrived to the house at 11.30pm on Tuesday.
The paper reported that the man was understood to have killed his father, mother-in-law, 17-year-old sister, 15-year-old half-sister and 5-year-old half-brother.
Christophe Rode, prosecutor for Bourg-en-Bresse, seat of the Ain region, said the hostage taker was thought to have “suffered from psychiatric disorders”, in comments printed across France.
Mr Rode reportedly said the man called police himself and by the time officers arrived on the scene several family members were already dead.
More than 100 gendarmes were said to have been sent to the scene and specialists tried to negotiate with the man in the house.
“For several hours during the night and the morning of 20 July, the gendarmes tried to get in touch with the madman who refused, however, to answer the telephone calls of the gendarmes as well as the direct contacts attempted by the negotiators,” the prosecutor was quoted in Le Progres as saying.
The man went on to wave his gun in the direction of police, according to French national paper Le Monde, which quoted Mr Rode as saying: “Despite several calls for this individual to lay down his arms ... the man pointed his weapons and advanced in the direction of the gendarmes who then used their weapons on four occasions, causing serious injuries.”
The incident appears to be one of the deadliest family attacks in France for years.
In 2017, a 50-year-old man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering and dismembering four of his in-laws who he believed were hoarding gold hidden from the Nazis.
