Corsican boy 'kills four at home'

Police have been investigating the family's hillside home

A Corsican teenager has confessed to shooting dead both his parents and twin 10-year-old brothers in their beds with a hunting rifle, officials say.

The 16-year-old was detained after a relative to whom he confessed the killings alerted police, reports say.

Police found the four bloodied bodies at the family's home in the island's southern village of Albitreccia.

Police are questioning the youth to try to establish what prompted the killing spree on the French holiday island.

The teenager reportedly went missing for several hours following Tuesday night's shootings, before confiding to the relative who accompanied him to a local police station.

"It is a bit premature to draw an analysis about his psychological situation," Hubert Deininger, a police colonel, was quoted as saying on France-Info radio.

Police have not released the names of the teenager or his parents, whose ages were given as 43 and 45.