MOSUL (Reuters) -- Gunmen killed seven people from a single family, members of the minority Yazidi sect, when they stormed into their home in northern Iraq, police said.
Police said a woman, her husband, and the couple's adult children were shot dead in the attack, which took place early on December 15 in the town of Sinjar, west of Mosul, a city around 390 kilometers north of Baghdad.
Violence in Iraq has declined sharply in the last year, but ethnically and religiously mixed Mosul remains the country's most violent city, with car bombs, roadside blasts, and shootings still taking place on a regular basis.
The U.S. military describes Mosul as Al-Qaeda's last major urban haven in Iraq.
The attack is not the first time militants have targeted Yazidis, who are part of a pre-Islamic religious sect and live in northern Iraq and Syria. Al-Qaeda views them as infidels.
Last year, suicide truck bombers killed hundreds of people in Yazidi villages north of Mosul in one the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq's history.