Russian investigators probe killing of policeman, relatives

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian federal investigators have opened an investigation into the killings of a former police officer and five family members who were found dead in a provincial town.

Andrei Gosht and his relatives were discovered dead in their home Sunday in the village of Ivashovka, 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) southeast of Moscow, near the town of Syzran where Gosht had previously worked as a police officer, investigators said Monday. They said Gosht and his family - including his wife, brother, sister-in-law and parents - were apparently killed by blunt-force trauma sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

According to Russian media reports, Gosht's seven-year-old niece was the only family member who survived and she was hospitalized with heavy trauma injuries.

The spokesman for the federal investigative committee, Vladimir Markin, told the Interfax news agency that the calculated brutality of the slayings resembles the grisly 2010 killings of 12 people in Russia's southern Krasnodar region by a criminal gang.

The Russian Interior Ministry has offered a reward of 3 million rubles ($45,000) for information leading to the killers.