DALIAN: Police in this port city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province yesterday offered a reward of 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) in exchange for clues leading to the arrest of the person behind the murder of a family of four last Saturday.

According to the police notice, the murders occurred in Laoyemiao Village in the Wafangdian, the suburbs of Dalian, near Highway 202 from Dalian to Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Any drivers who passed the section of the highway near the village that night have been asked to provide information about other vehicles seen exiting or entering the highway.

Police declined to provide more details about the case, saying only that they had been ordered to capture the criminals by the end of the year.

The Liaoshen Evening News, a local newspaper in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, reported on Tuesday that a couple and their two children had been murdered at Laoyemiao Village.

The husband, Xie, 36, and wife, Song, 35, were found dead in their house by Xie's elder brother on Sunday morning. The couple's 11-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son were missing.

The brother immediately called the police. Police investigators said the couple had been bludgeoned to death with hammers. The children were found dead in a well in the courtyard behind the house.

Xie's house, an isolated two-story building near the highway, is far from the village. The closest building was unoccupied on the night of the murders. Workers at a petroleum station about 50 metres away did not hear any noise that night, according to the paper's report.

The couple ran a restaurant out of their house and also managed a transportation business consisting of two trucks, the neighbours said.

Their home was equipped with a monitoring and alarm system, but it had been shut off because business had been slow in the past month, the paper quoted Xie's mother-in-law as saying.

(China Daily 12/21/2006 page3)