Gunmen shot dead nine members of an Iraqi family after storming their house in the village of Awja, north of Baghdad, police said.

"They attacked the house at 4 a.m. and opened fire," said a policeman who was at the scene but who declined to be named.

"They killed the husband, his wife and their seven sons. We don't yet know why." He said the victims were Sunni Arabs but the village, the birthplace of former ruler Saddam Hussein, had largely been spared the tit-for-tat sectarian killings that last year brought Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.

Speaking from a hospital in nearby Tikrit, where the bodies were brought, another policeman said the dead included a seven year old boy.

The US military says attacks nationwide have decreased 60 percent since June, but operations by U.S. troops and government forces are ongoing in northern Iraq to flush out Sunni Arab al Qaeda, blamed for a string of bomb attacks in the region.