Massacre

A massacre is an event of killing defenseless human beings or animals. It is generally used to describe a targeted mass killing of civilians by an armed group. It can also be used figuratively to refer to a one-sided exchange between armed groups. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, and extrajudicial killing.