A 30-year-old man has gunned down 12 relatives, including his father and brother in Iran, according to official media reports on Saturday, in a rare mass shooting that occurred in the country.
Reports alleged that the man, who is still to be identified, had used a Kalashnikov assault rifle but he was later shot and killed by security forces in the south-central province of Kerman.
State media reports say that the cause of the shooting, which occurred in a remote rural village, was a family dispute but they did not elaborate on this.
Mass killings are infrequent in Iran, where hunting rifles are the only weapons people are permitted to possess. Two years ago, a sacked employee of a state institution in western Iran shot and killed three people and also injured five others before killing himself.
