text: A serial killer of rabbits has struck fear into the hearts of the people of a picturesque French village on the north Brittany coast. 
   
   More than 100 animals have fallen victim to the mystery killer since he or she began their murderous spree in and around the village of Minihy-Tréguier, a pretty spot popular with tourists and home to a handful of British expats. 
   
   "The village is gripped by fear," Jean-Yves Fenvarc'h, the mayor of the village of 1,300 people, told the Telegraph. 
   
   The killer sneaks into people's gardens, removes the rabbits from their hutches, kills them with a sharp object or by simply crushing them with his foot, and then leaves their dead bodies where they died. 
   
   The rabbits he kills are often kept by elderly people who house them in their gardens, sometimes alongside chickens or geese. 
   
   “He (the killer) never touches the chickens or the geese,” said Mr Fenvarc'h. 
   
   The mayor said the attacks, which now number 15 in total, began in March, then eased off before starting again in August, and then, after another lull, resumed earlier this month. 
   
   What makes the situation particularly scary, he said, was the fact that the killer sometimes returns to the scene of a crime to kill again. ||||| Detectives are hunting a serial killer who is believed to be responsible for beating to death about a hundred pet rabbits in a small town in Brittany. 
   
   Officers believe that the culprit, whom they describe as cold-blooded, is human rather than a fox or another wild animal and have issued an appeal for witnesses. 
   
   The killer strikes when owners leave home, raising fears that properties are being watched. Local residents believe that the killer must know the area to be able to identify people with rabbit hutches that are not visible from the road. 
   
   Police in the Côtes-d’Armor region denounced a “series of acts of cruelty against domestic rabbits” in and around the town of Minihy-Tréguier. “The cages are opened then the animals are killed…
target: – A French town is being terrorized by a serial killer—but humans aren't the target. The Telegraph reports that someone in the village of Minihy-Treguier has so far slaughtered more than 100 rabbits, slipping into residents' yards, yanking rabbits out of their hutches, and either stomping them to death by foot or murdering them with a sharp tool of some kind. "The cages are opened, then the animals are killed in cold blood and left at the scene," a police statement notes, per the Sunday Times. The town's mayor says there've been 15 attacks in all, starting in March, with some homes getting hit more than once. "He returned to one home four times, killing 20 rabbits there in all," the mayor notes. One woman who lost six adult rabbits—as well as some of their babies, which died after the mothers were killed—tells local media she once surprised a man she though was the rabbit murderer, wearing a black hat and a long raincoat, one morning, "but he had the time to make his escape." Oddly left alone in these murderous rampages: chickens and geese that often cohabitate with the bunnies. (Authorities don't think foxes or other animals are killing the rabbits, as was the case with a slew of mysterious cat deaths in the UK.)