An enraged man in a western Ugandan district took a machete and hacked to death his wife and six children before hanging himself, the government press reported on Saturday.
Abdallah Byekwaso cut his children aged two to 13 beyond recognition and beheaded one of his sons. Only one of his children, a girl who stay with a relative in a nearby village, survived, the New Vision newspaper reported. His wife was only identified as Namu.
The motive for the killings, which happened in Kagadi township in Kibale district, about 280km from the capital, Kampala, could not readily be established.
Telephone lines for police officials — including the force spokesperson and his deputy — were switched off on Saturday morning. The New Vision, however, quoted witnesses from the area as saying that there was a fight between Byekwaso and his wife before the murders.
The paper’s sister daily, Bukedde, a vernacular tabloid, carried gory pictures of the bodies lying side by side with deep cuts in its Saturday edition.
According to the New Vision, the children and wife’s bodies were lying outside the house while Byekwaso’s body was found hanging by a cotton cloth in the middle of his two-room mud and wattle house.
His body had bruises that made residents believe that there had been a fight with his wife.
There is an apparent increase in incidences of domestic violence in Uganda, mostly preceded by feuds over extramarital relations by the spouses. Kampala’s tabloids carry almost daily stories and grisly pictures of the dead and injured victims of family fights. — Sapa-dpa