Three men arrested over brutal Russian massacre

Eight adults and two children were found stabbed to death inside the burning farmhouse, along with the bodies of another two children. One of the infants, killed in the arms of her great uncle, was nine months old.

The arrested young men are from the same village. On Thursday, Russian prosecutors announced the arrest of brothers Alexei and Yevgeny Gurov, and Vyacheslav Skachedub, all aged between 17 and 24. The three were allegedly in possession of drugs.

Emergency services went to the large, two-storey farmhouse in the old Cossack village of Kushchevskaya last Thursday night after reports of a fire.

Inside they found the bodies of farmer Serever Ametov and his relatives and bodies of a family guest, businessman Vladimir Mironenko, and his relatives. One child reportedly choked to death on toxic fumes and another had been strangled.

The remains of two of Ametov's neighbours were also discovered and the family guard dog was also found dead, put to sleep with an injection.

A total of five families were devastated in the attack: Serever Ametov, 51, and his wife Galina, 48; the Ametovs' niece Yelena, 19, and her nine-month-old daughter Amira, whom Ametov was holding when they were killed; the Ametovs' neighbour Natalya Kasyanova,

36, and her son Pavel, 14, arrived at the farmhouse in the middle of the massacre; Vladimir Mironenko, 48, and his wife Marina, with their daughters Alyona, one, and Irina, five, and Lidia and Viktor Ignatenko, Mironenko's parents-in-law.

Prosecutors said the motive for the killings might have been "personal hostility towards one of the dead", and they described two of those arrested as "active members of a gang" operating in the region.