The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Mosul

Seven members of a family belonging to the ancient Yazidi religious sect were assassinated overnight in the Sinjar area of northwest Iraq, police said on Monday.

"A group of armed men entered a house during the night and fired at a Yazidi family, killing three women and four men," said Nashawan Mohammed, a police officer in the city of 240,000 people near the Syrian border.

In August last year, more than 400 people were slaughtered when four suicide truck bombs targeted members of the sect.

Yazidis-who number some 500,000 -- speak a dialect of Kurdish but follow a pre-Islamic religion and have their own cultural traditions.

They believe in God the creator and respect the Biblical and Koranic prophets, especially Abraham, but their main focus of worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels, often represented by a peacock.

Followers of other religions know this angel as Lucifer or Satan, leading to popular prejudice that the secretive Yazidis are devil-worshippers.