A serial rabbit-killer who has been spreading terror around a picturesque village in Brittany has struck again.

Police were called after the bodies of seven rabbits were discovered slaughtered and dumped on the ground at a home in the village of Minihy-Tréguier on the Côtes-d’Armor coast on Saturday morning.

Shocked locals had hoped the killings, which reportedly began in March, had stopped after several weeks passed without any animals being killed.

Officers say the mystery killer leaves few if any clues but has the same modus operandi each time: he or she sneaks into private gardens at night, takes the rabbits from their hutches, and either stabs them with a needle or sharp object or crushes them underfoot. The bodies are then left on the ground.

“It’s frightening. If they can attack defenceless animals like rabbits, they could very well, one day, attack people, particularly the elderly,” Annick, a villager, told the Le Télégramme newspaper.

A neighbour, Isabelle, added: “You have to be sick to do something like this to animals. I mean, it’s not even to eat them.”

A Facebook appeal by the local gendarmerie for witnesses to the rabbit killings. Photograph: Facebook

Eugène and Marie-Françoise L’Hévéder, aged 80 and 77, have lost 20 rabbits in four separate attacks.

“We’ve been raising rabbits for 55 years and it’s the first time we’ve had anything like this happen. We’re completely lost. We ask ourselves who could do something like this,” Eugène L’Hévéder told the newspaper.

Jean-Yves Fenvarc’h, the mayor of Minihy-Tréguier, population 1,320, where the rabbit killer has struck several times, said 10 rabbit-keepers had been targeted, some of them more than once. “The victims are often pensioners who have a vegetable garden, (rabbit) hutches and chickens. It’s their passion, their hobby. It’s sad,” he told France 3 television.

The killings have echoes of the mystery of the Croydon cat killer, a three-year investigation into the mutilation of cats found around south London with their heads and tails removed. In that case, Scotland Yard declared foxes to be the most likely culprit.

A report of a man seen leaving the scene of a killing “wearing a raincoat and a hat” suggests the culprit in this case is likely to be human.

The local gendarmerie has launched an appeal for witnesses over the “series of cruel acts against domestic rabbits”.