TEGUCIGALPA – Reports of the massacre of 16 members of an extended family in a remote area of the eastern Honduran province of Olancho turned out to be false, police said Friday.

“A relative (of the alleged victims) has confirmed that his siblings and nieces and nephews are fine and that no massacre existed,” senior police official Alex Villanueva told the media.

The National Police will investigate to determine why someone concocted the story about a mass killing in a hamlet that is several hours’ walk from the nearest town, he said.

Another police commander who traveled to the site told Radio Cadena Voces that a teacher at the local school said all but one of the children ostensibly massacred had been in class all week.

The child not in school was also accounted for, the police commander said.

Leonidas Carrasco came forward Thursday to say that someone telephoned him with the news that his daughter, Teodora, and her husband, Anastacio Almendarez, were slain along with a number of children.

Carrasco’s statements sent journalists, police and prosecutors to the remote settlement of Payabila, where they arrived in the wee hours of Friday to find no evidence of any violence, Villanueva said. EFE