Baghdad — A suicide bomber driving a truck packed with explosives blew himself up in a village in northern Iraq, killing at least 15 members of the country’s Shabak minority early on Thursday, Oct. 17,  police said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but Sunni Islamist militants have in the past targeted Shabaks, who are predominantly Shia, and warned them to leave the area.

The attack took place in the village of Mwafaqiya in Nineveh province.

“At 6 am this morning, a suicide truck bomber detonated himself amidst the houses of my village,” said Qusay Abbas, a former Shabak representative in the Mousl provincial council. “There are still some people under the debris of their houses”.

Sunni Islamist and other insurgents, including an al-Qaeda affiliate, have been regaining ground this year in an onslaught against Iraq’s government and its allies.

Seven bombs exploded in primarily Shi’a districts of the Iraqi capital late on Thursday, killing 33 people in all, police and medics said. One blast occurred near an amusement park north of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, killing six children.

On Tuesday, a bomb exploded near a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing eight Sunni worshippers after the first prayer of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, or Eid al-Adha, police and medical sources said.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in acts of violence across the country this year, according to monitoring group Iraq Body Count.