Four relatives, including a 13-year-old boy, were brutally hacked to death in the troubled southern Philippines, police said on Monday.
Local residents discovered the hogtied bodies of the four farm caretakers in Compostela Valley about 970 kilometres (603 miles) south of Manila, said Superintendent Antonio Rivera, police spokesman for the southern island of Mindanao where the killings happened Sunday.
The four bodies were covered with stab wounds and had their faces covered with cloth, the police said.
Authorities suspect the killings may be related to a land conflict in the largely feudal region where violence is often used to settle disputes between families over property and politics.
In one of the worst cases, 58 people, including lawyers and journalists, were murdered in Mindanao in November 2009 allegedly by members of a powerful political clan who were trying to prevent a challenger from running against one of their members in an upcoming election.