A man in Thailand filmed himself killing his 11-month old daughter and then taking his own life on Facebook Live, Thai police said, the latest example of the social network's live-streaming function being used to broadcast grisly crimes.
Officers on the southern resort island of Phuket said they were alerted to the video by friends of the man and rushed to an abandoned hotel near the international airport on Monday afternoon.
"They had already died when I arrived there," a police lieutenant, one of the first on the scene, told AFP, adding a smartphone was found propped up against a wall.
Police said they believed the man had previously argued with his wife. "He was having paranoia about his wife leaving him and not loving him," police said.
Television broadcast footage of the child's distraught mother, flanked by relatives, picking up both her daughter's body and her husband's corpse from the local hospital today.
Phuket's governor called on Thais not to share the four-minute clip of the murder and suicide, copies of which could still be found on the social network this afternoon, some 24 hours after it went live.
In a statement this evening Facebook described the incident as "appalling".
"There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed," the social network told AFP.
The killing comes just days after Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to work to keep the world's leading social network from being used to propagate harrowing acts like murder and suicide.
Mr Zuckerberg was responding to pressure after a man in the US state of Ohio used Facebook Live to broadcast footage of himself walking up to a stranger in the street and shooting him dead.
The killer went on to fatally shoot himself after a massive manhunt and police chase.
During a speech last week, Mr Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook had "a lot of work" to do on the issue.
"We are going to work on building common ground, not just getting more opinions out there," he added.
Thailand's Ministry of Digital Economy said it contacted Facebook today about removing the videos, after receiving a police request.
"We contacted Facebook today and Facebook removed thevideos," a ministry spokesman told Reuters, adding that the government would take no action against the company.
Facebook already has a 24-hour team of moderators who decide whether to remove content that is reported to them. Suicides and crimes are prioritised.
But the network says they are limited by how quickly they can respond to the sheer volume of content posted online each day.
They add that there have been instances where reported videos of a suicide attempt has resulted in a person being saved by local law enforcement, including such a case in Thailand in January.
