News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A dad says he brutally slaughtered his pregnant wife, six children and his own mum because he was furious over his son’s haircut.

Oleg Belov told a court he killed his entire family during a savage ten-minutes because of his six-year-old son’s “parrot” haircut.

Speaking during his trial in Russia, he told how his wife Yulia, 32, wanted to divorce him and said they had been arguing over his son's haircut.

He told the court: “She cut him like a parrot. I asked her "Are you kidding or what?’

“I tried to grab the hair clipper and a fight broke out.”

(Image: Lifenews/East2West)

Belov says he then hit his wife twice before she ran screaming into a hallway and began knocking on the doors of his neighbours.

As reported by The Sun, he went on to describe how his wife was “screaming to loud” and he was “very scared” because he did not want the authorities to take away his children.

Belov admits killing his wife because he feared losing his children: adding: “I killed the children so they would stay mine".

Prosecutors claim after killing his wife Belov then killed all his children.

They say he then went to his 73-year-old mum’s house where he stabbed her 21 times.

Prosecutors say Belov murdered his wife in front of his children and then decided to kill them all in order to cover up the crime.

Belov is facing life in prison after confessing to the mass murder of his family.

(Image: Lifenews/East2West)

The discovery of the children's bodies left Russia shocked.

Russian police discovered the dismembered children - aged between seven and one - after several failed to show for school.

All had been killed with an axe and their remains left in plastic bags, said police.

(Image: Komsomolskaya-Pravda/East2West)

The children were named as Alyona, seven, Fyodor, six, Sonya, five, Nikifor, three, Ilya, two, and Daria, one.

Their mother was named as Zinaida, a lecturer in advanced mathematics at a local university.

Locals said the father had been ex-communicated from the Seventh Day Adventists religious group for allegedly committing adultery, according to major Russian news website LifeNews.

The alert was raised by the kindergarten and Zinaida's mother Valentina Zaitseva, 69, after the children were not seen for a week, after not attending classes since 25 July.

The Kremlin's children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said that it appeared the mother intended to deprive Belov of his paternal rights, barring him from raising the youngsters.

The trial continues.