The violence, hot on the heels of the storming of a police compound in west Iraq and a suicide attack on Shia pilgrims in the south, comes with the country locked in a festering political row pitting the Shia-led government against the main Sunni-backed political bloc.

The 8:00 am (0500 GMT) attack in the town of Bartala, in Nineveh province, struck inside the Al-Ghadir camp housing displaced members of the Shabak community, an army official and a medic at Mosul hospital said.

Seven people were killed, including an unspecified number of women and children, and four were wounded, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The medic said some of the casualties had been transferred to hospital in the nearby Kurdish regional capital Arbil, but did not give further details.