BAGHDAD, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen shot dead seven family members at a village in Salahudin Province, north of Iraq's capital Baghdad, the Iraqi military said Friday.
The incident took place around midnight when the gunmen wearing military uniforms and using military vehicles broke into a house in a village in the south of the provincial capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, Mohammed al-Bazi from the provincial police told Xinhua.
The attackers opened fire from their silenced weapons, killed four brothers and three sisters, and wounding a child, before fleeing the scene, al-Bazi said.
Iraqi provinces north of Baghdad have witnessed intense activities by the militants of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group in the past months, despite repeated military operations to hunt them down.
The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.
However, IS remnants have since melted into urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians. Enditem
