Man kills five with axe, hammer at Ukraine displacement shelter

A 72-year-old man has killed five people in Ukraine's western Rivne region using an axe and a hammer in a facility for internally displaced people (IDP), police said.

The motive of the attack was unclear, but the police said it was "a domestic conflict" that "escalated into a fight" between the residents of a former school building now housing displaced people from eastern and central Ukraine.

"During the altercation, the man began striking five people with a hammer and an axe," the Rivne region police said on social media.

The attack happened in the early hours of Tuesday, police added.

"As a result of the injuries sustained, five citizens died at the scene: men aged 60 and 68, two women aged 81 and 78 from the Donetsk region, and a 56-year-old native of the Kirovograd region."

Images posted by the police showed a large hole in the door leading to one of the rooms and traces of blood on an axe and on the building's floor.

The suspect, himself a displaced person from the embattled Donetsk region in Ukraine's east, has been detained, and a probe has been opened into premeditated murder, the prosecutor general's office said.

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Source: TRT