An apparent campaign of violence against Iraqi Christians in the volatile city of Mosul has killed at least eight people since Feb. 14, according to Iraqi authorities and human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch this week called on the Iraqi government to better protect its Christian minority, especially as attacks increase ahead of parliamentary elections March 7. HRW says the separate attacks "appear to be politically motivated, given the country's looming national election."

HRW's statement mentioned five killings of Christians:

- Feb. 14 Rayan Salem Elias, a Chaldean man, was shot dead outside his home.

- Feb. 15 Gunmen stormed a grocery store and killed the Christian owner, Fatukhi Munir

- Feb. 16 Assailants posing as secret police approached two Christian university students, cousins Zaya Toma, 22, and Ramsin Shmael, 21, at a bus stop in the Tahrir district of Mosul. The students were asked for their ID cards, on which their obviously Christian names are printed. One of the gunmen shot Toma at point-blank range, killing him instantly. Shmael tried to flee and was shot twice -- his teeth were shattered -- and the gunmen left him for dead. He survived. 

- Feb. 17 The bullet-riddled body of Wissam George, a 20-year-old Assyrian teaching student, was found after he disappeared on his way to school.

- Feb. 20 The body of Adnan Hanna al Dahan, a 57-year-old Syrian Orthodox grocer, was found in northern Mosul. Assailants had kidnapped him from his store a few days earlier.

Last night, McClatchy's Iraqi correspondent in Mosul alerted us to three more deaths that occurred Monday:

- Feb. 22 Gunmen broke into a Christian family's home in the Saha neighborhood of western Mosul, killing a father and his two sons, local police said.

In the case of Toma and Shmael, HRW wrote, the family had moved north to Mosul from Baghdad in the summer of 2007 after receiving threats that warned them to convert to Islam or be killed. That was at the height of Iraq's sectarian violence, in which Christians found themselves especially vulnerable as a Sunni-Shiite civil war raged around them.

HRW quoted the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Emil Shimoun Nona, as saying the recent attacks could prompt a new wave of Christian refugees fleeing from northern Iraq. Nona was installed as archbishop after the body of his predecessor, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahno, was discovered in March 2008, 10 days after he was kidnapped from the Holy Spirit Church in Mosul.

Since 2003, between 250,000 and 500,000 Christians -- about half the Christian population -- left the country, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Human Rights Watch document targeted killings of Chaldo-Assyrians in Mosul in late 2008 in a 51-page report that was released in November 2009. The title is, "On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province's Disputed Territories."