Islamabad, Sept 03: Three women and four children were among eight family members hacked or shot dead in an "honour killing" massacre in Pakistan, police said today. A group of seven men armed with firearms and axes barged into a home in the remote village of Bagh in the deeply-conservative North West Frontier Province yesterday. They shot and hacked their way through a family that included a two-week-old baby, police officer Hakeem Shah told a news agency by telephone.

Killed were Dilbar Khan, 70, his wife, two daughter-in-laws and four grandchildren. The men, who fled into the mountains after the massacre, were avenging the alleged elopement two years earlier of a young woman from their family with a young man related to Khan.

A manhunt is underway to track the assailants. "Honour" killings accounted for the deaths of nearly 700 people in Pakistan last year, the majority of them women, according to the private human rights commission of Pakistan.

They are considered punishments in the name of protecting family honour.

Bureau Report