Roma father and five-year-old son shot dead in Hungary

A father and his five-year-old boy were shot dead in an attack on a Roma family home in Hungary yesterday. Two children were injured when the house caught fire, according to local police. It is the latest in a string of attacks on Roma houses in which seven people have died over the past year.

Spent shotgun cartridges were found in the snow near the ruins of the family home in a village 30 kilometres from the Hungarian capital Budapest. The victim's wife and two daughters were rescued. The mother was in shock and the girls, aged three and six, had serious injuries. The two had been trying to escape the house when they were shot, Viktoria Mohacsi, a Roma Hungarian member of the European Parliament, told Reuters news agency.

It isn’t clear whether the attack was racially motivated, but Mohacsi said it had the hallmarks of similar ones on Roma elsewhere in Hungary over the past year."I believe this (fire) could not have been caused by anything other than a petrol bomb," Mohacsi said. "My assumption is that this attack was racially motivated," she added

A reward of about £30,000 has been put up for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators of what is belatedly being treated as a double murder. Police announced the manhunt hours after criticism from Roma leaders, including Viktoria Mohacsi, over the authorities' slow reaction to the incident.

Ms Mohacsi said the family of the victims, told her they were frustrated over the police response. "The police were unwilling to acknowledge that a murder had taken place," Mohacsi told MTI. After an initial investigation on Monday morning, local police said an electrical short circuit had caused the blaze.

Hungary has one of the largest communities of Roma, in eastern Europe, making up five to seven per cent of the 10 million population.A deepening recession and job losses are stoking resentment against the Roma in Hungary and has led to a strengthening of the far-right which fights against what it says is a rise in "Roma crime." There have been 16 reported attacks on Roma homes in Hungary over the past year, involving petrol bombs, guns and even hand grenades. In only one case was the perpetrator caught by police.

Florian Farkas, head of the Roma organization Lungo Drom, warned, MIT reported, of a "civil war situation" developing in Hungary if there is no progress towards the integration of Hungary's largest ethnic minority.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children