Cairo: An Egyptian man killed his wife and six children before attempting to take his own life, local media reported Friday.
The seven bodies, including eight-month twins, were found inside the family’s house in a village in the southern governorate of Fayyum early Friday.
The man reportedly murdered the seven using a knife. He later went to a bakery he rents in the village and set it on fire in a suicide attempt. But he was rescued and handed over to police.
Security forces rushed to the scene and cordoned it off as bodies were transferred to a local morgue.
The motive for the crime, dubbed in the local media as a “massacre”, is not clear yet. Neighbours said the man was often at odds with his wife.
Drugs influence
Preliminary investigations revealed that the man had killed his family under the influence of drugs, according to Egyptian newspaper Al Watan.
The crime was the latest in a series of recent family crimes in Egypt.
An owner of a local coffee shop was recently arrested and admitted to having killed his wife with a knife allegedly for being unfaithful to him in the area of Al Warq in Giza, south of Cairo. The 37-year-old man claimed to have found intimate WhatsApp messages exchanged between his wife and another man. In revenge, he reportedly inflicted 20 stabs on her
