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Gunmen kill 8 in Iraqi village
Assailants killed eight members of a Shiite family in a village outside Baghdad on Monday, shooting some and beheading others, just one of a series of pre-election shooting and car bombing attacks that swept the country, killing 22 people in all.
Attacks on civilians were commonplace at the height of the sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007. The targeting of civilians on Monday, especially the beheadings considered a hallmark of Sunni insurgents, raised concerns that the vicious sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart could resurface.
The Baghdad-area security command said in a statement that a "terrorist group" using silencers shot and beheaded eight members of a single family in Wahda, a mixed Shiite-Sunni village 20 miles south of Baghdad. Authorities didn't say how many were shot and how many were beheaded, and provided few other details of what they described as an "ugly crime."