The Russian Interior Ministry has offered a reward of 3 million rubles ($45,000) for information leading to the killers of a policeman and his family in Russia's southern city of Syzran, the ministry said in a statement Monday.
The body of former Syzran police chief Andrei Gosht was found in the village of Ivashovka on Sunday alongside five members of his family. A 7-year-old girl who survived the massacre has been hospitalized in a coma, the TASS news agency reported.
Gosht and his family were attacked while sleeping and died from head trauma caused by a blunt weapon, the Investigative Committee reported.
No motive for the attack has been established, but the policeman's former colleagues have speculated that the murder could be motivated by revenge. Gosht had actively fought crime while working in Syzran, the television channel Ren-TV reported.
The violent killing resembles the 2010 massacre of a farmer's family in the village of Kushchevskaya, in the Krasnodar region. Twelve people, including four children, were stabbed to death by a local gang in the incident.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a policeman's family was murdered in the Kushchevskaya village, when in fact it was a farmer's family.
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