Police shot dead a man in his twenties in rural eastern France on Wednesday after he murdered five members of his family before barricading himself in a village home, local sources told AFP.

Special forces from the French police department were deployed in the village of Douvres in the foothills of the Alps about 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Lyon from Tuesday night.

Christian Limousin, mayor of a neighbouring village, said the suspect had killed five members of his own family, including three children, before being gunned down by police as they stormed the property.

Neither the police nor the local prosecutor’s office confirmed the identity of the victims.

The latest mass crime scene came after a triple homicide in the provincial town of Angers at the weekend when a Sudanese refugee stabbed three young rugby players to death after an argument in the street.

Elsewhere in France, a woman police officer in the town of Dreux west of Paris shot dead a man who lunged at her with a sword following a domestic dispute on Saturday evening, prosecutors said.

Fear of crime was one of the leading campaign issues during presidential and parliamentary elections in France this year which saw the anti-immigration and far-right National Rally party make historic gains. (AFP)

•PHOTO: French gendarmes stand guard near a deviation sign for the road leading to the house in which a man suspected of having shot five people, barricaded himself” before he was shot by the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) in Douvres, center eastern France, on July 20, 2022. (Photo by Jean-Philippe KSIAZEK / AFP)