Ex-policeman kills four in Russian bar rampage

A former traffic police officer killed four people when he opened fire in front of a bar in the Russian Far East.

About a dozen were wounded, officials said.

The man opened fire on Saturday evening in the town of Yaroslavka in the Primorye region, said an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Reports said the man opened fire from a carbine near a bar and then injured himself in an attempted suicide.

Witnesses said there was no warning before the carnage.

“He was drunk, that cop,” Nikolai Yevsikov, a teenager wounded in the incident told TVS television.

“He entered the bar and just shot the crowd dead - for no particular reason.”

Russian traffic police are notorious for accepting bribes and widely disliked.

Brutality and corruption are widespread among all divisions of the police, human rights advocates say, and cash-strapped law enforcement agencies have struggled to attract qualified workers since the breakup of the Soviet Union.