Iraqi police say gunmen have killed seven members of a family belonging to Iraq's minority Yazidi sect.
Police Monday said the family was assassinated in their home in the town of Sinjar, west of Mosul.
The mayor of Sinjar, Dakhil Qasim, said the killings may have been part of what he called a "social dispute" - a reference that can be related to honor killings.
Yazidis are part of a Kurdish-speaking, pre-Islamic religious sect, and have suffered in the violence of post-invasion Iraq.
Last year, suicide truck bombers killed at least 400 people in two Yazidi villages. The explosions were one of the deadliest coordinated militant attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led war began in 2003.
In a separate attack Monday, Iraqi police say a suicide bomber killed at least eight policemen at a checkpoint west of Baghdad.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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