Gunmen shot dead a female Sunni Arab candidate from a secular political group in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, a provincial police source said on Monday.

The incident took place late on Sunday when armed men gunned down Suha Abdulla al-Jaralla, a candidate for the Iraqia List, a secular and nationalist group headed by the former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, in the Ra's al-Jada neighborhood in western Mosul.

Jaralla was killed while she was leaving the house of her relatives in the neighborhood at night, the source added.

The Iraqia List is expected to take part in the country's parliamentary elections slated for March 7.

Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, has been a stronghold of insurgent groups and al-Qaida fighters in the war-torn country.

Nineveh province remains one of Iraq's most volatile areas despite major security crackdowns by U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces to uproot the insurgency which erupted shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.