Flags flew at half mast throughout Slovakia on Thursday as the country mourned seven victims of a gunman who killed a family and then opened fire in a street in the capital.

Slovaks were banned from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm (0600 GMT to 1600 GMT) from gambling while public television and radio dropped broadcasts of entertainment programmes and some commercials.

“We sympathise with all those who were hurt by the loss of their nearest and who are suffering innocently,” Prime Minister Iveta Radicova wrote in a condolence book displayed at the government office since Wednesday.

Slovakia is still trying to understand what drove 48-year-old Lubomir Harman to kill on Monday five neighbours including a 12-year-old boy, one of their relatives and a woman from a nearby house.

He also wounded at least 13 other people before shooting and killing himself.

Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic said earlier the motive had most likely arisen from conflicts in the neighbourhood as the family living on the same floor as Harman often had loud guests.

He dismissed a frequently quoted racist motive, after reports that the family were members of Slovakia’s Roma minority.

Some media noted that the victims were not all Roma.

“Only the men were Roma, not the women,” the daily SME said, reprinting a collage of the victims’ photographs taped next to a bullet hole on the prefabricated house where the family lived, and adorned with a crucifix.

People from Bratislava’s northwestern suburb of Devinska Nova Ves, where the rampage took place, told SME the family was “rather decent” while the gunman was “a weirdo.” But the daily also quoted Harman’s former colleague as saying the gunman, who wore combat clothes and carried a gun to work, hated “people with dark skin.” Police commander Jaroslav Spisiak conceded to parliament on Thursday that it may be impossible ever to find the motive.

“It was born in the gunman’s head and it stayed there,” he said.