The violence is stoking fears that security in Iraq could dissolve as the country’s political leaders scramble to secure enough support to form a government after last month’s elections failed to produce a clear winner.

Monday’s shooting happened around 2:30 p.m. some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Baghdad, police commander Maj. Aziz al-Amarah said. The gunmen shot four children — aged 11, 10, 9 and 6 — and their parents. Two teenage daughters escaped.

“I was with my sister upstairs when three men knocked on the door,” 18-year-old Amina said. She said the gunmen asked her father about someone, and he responded that he had no link to him.

She and her 16-year-old sister fled to the next house when the shooting started, Amina said.

The killings come after two other recent bloody attacks.

Col. Ben Danner, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the attacks on Friday and Sunday have no connection to the sectarian bloodshed that plagued Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

“These were not sectarian attacks,” Danner said, saying investigations indicate the killings in a village were part of a revenge attack on those who supported the Iraqi security forces. Sunday’s suicide bombings, he said, were a terrorist attack and not sectarian