Three children survive Ohio murder spree

Three children, one just four-days-old, have been found alive among the bodies of their parents after eight members of the same family were slain execution-style overnight in the US.

The victims were shot with a bullet to the head, some while they slept, after a gunman, or gunmen, went on a shooting rampage at four locations in a small town in the US state of Ohio, NBC News reports.

Emergency services discovered the children, their ages ranging from newborn to three-years-old, after responding to reports of gunshots.

The newborn baby was found lying in bed with the lifeless body of its young mother. 

The three children have been taken to a nearby hospital to be monitored.

Local police are yet to uncover a motive to explain why eight members of the Rhoden family from Piketon, Ohio, were targeted.

Of the victims, seven were adults with the eighth a male aged 16. Police said there was nothing to suggest their deaths were suicide-related.

“There is a strong possibility that any individuals involved with this are armed and extremely dangerous,” Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader told the media.

“There may be one, there may be two, there may be three, we just don’t know,” Attorney General Mike DeWine added.

Police have been forced to set up four different crime scenes, with the shootings being carried out in close proximity to each other.

NBC News reports three of the crime scenes were around 1km radius of each other while the fourth was 10 minutes away.

Piketown is 145kms east of Cincinnati and has a population of around 2000.