Русско-англо-русский юридический словарь

Mass murder (sometimes interchangeable with "mass destruction") is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others. (Wikipedia)

A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe killing of civilians en masse by an armed group. (Wikipedia)

"It was a miracle I was not thrown into the Seine," Algerian Hocine Hakem recalled about an infamous but little-known massacre in the French capital 60 years ago. [...] On 17 October 1961, the police killed at least 100 protesters, some of whom were thrown into the River Seine, making it one of the darkest pages of France's chequered colonial history. (BBC)

When the story broke that American troops had committed the massacre at My Lai on March 16, 1968, I was in Germany reporting for TIME on the student movement. (Time)

On Dec. 6, 1989, 14 women were killed in a shooting massacre at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. (CBC)

The coroner’s damning report implicated the army in an atrocity to rival Bloody Sunday, a massacre of civil rights protesters in Derry five months later. The Parachute Regiment was implicated in both events. (The Guardian)