A Serbian man on Tuesday shot dead 13 relatives and neighbours, including a two-year-old child, as he went on a pre-dawn killing spree in his tiny village in the Belgrade region, police said.
It was the worst such incident in the Balkan country in two decades.
The 60-year-old war veteran, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, shot most of his victims in the head as they slept before trying to kill himself and his wife.
Both were seriously wounded along with a third person, who later died in a hospital, Serbian police chief Milorad Veljovic told reporters at the scene labeling the crime "monstrous."
He said the victims who died — six men, six women and the child — include Bogdanovic's mother and his 42-year-old son.
"Twelve people were killed on the spot while the 13th died in hospital," said Veljovic.
According to the victims' neighbours the killed child was a boy, whose name was David, while most of the victims were Bogdanovic's relatives.
The motive for the attack in the village of Velika Ivanca, located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Belgrade, was not immediately clear.
Veljovic said Bogdanovic went house to house at 5:00 am local time (0300 GMT) methodically shooting his victims in five houses located on a hill on the outskirts of the village.
He is thought to have first killed his son and mother, then wounded his wife, before continuing on his spree and turning the gun on himself when a police patrol arrived.
"When he saw the patrol he shot himself in the head in a yard," an interior ministry statement said.
Residents of the village of about 1,700 inhabitants were in shock Tuesday and some wept as they tried to understand the reason behind the killings.
Neighbours said Bogdanovic, who fought as a Serb soldier during the 1990s war in Croatia and had a firearms license, lost his job as a labourer last year. He then became a farmer.
