MOSCOW: Russian investigators said on Wednesday they had arrested a man suspected of killing his common-law wife, his mother and six small children and hacking their bodies to pieces with an axe.

The Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said Oleg Belov was detained on suspicion of carrying out the murders, for which he could face up to 20 years in jail. Police broke into the family apartment in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on Tuesday and found the bodies of the six children and their mother hacked to pieces.

The mother was believed to be pregnant when she was murdered.The alarm had been raised after the children, all aged six and under, didn’t turn up at kindergarten in July.