Baghdad , Iraq ( CNN ) -- Three people were killed Monday in Iraq in the latest attack targeting Christians , police in the city of Mosul said . In one attack , two Christian brothers were killed in Mosul when gunmen broke into their workplace in an industrial part of the city and shot them . The brothers were welders who owned the shop . On Monday evening , police found an elderly Christian woman strangled in her home in central Mosul . The attacks on Christians started October 31 in Baghdad have extended to the northern parts of the country , such as Mosul . Last week , a bomb attached to the vehicle of a Christian man detonated in eastern Mosul , killing him and his 6-year-old daughter , local police told CNN . The November 16 attack came one day after two Christian men in adjacent homes were killed after gunmen stormed their houses . Also on November 15 , a bomb detonated outside a Christian home . It caused damages but no injuries . Iraq 's Christian community , which numbered 1.4 million in 2003 , is estimated to have dwindled to 500,000 as many have left the country , the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has said . The commission , a U.S. government agency that listed the numbers in its 2010 report , said Christian leaders are warning that this decline could signal `` the end of Christianity in Iraq . ''
Attacks on Christians began October 2010 in Baghdad and have spread north . The latest victims include two children and an elderly woman . Iraq 's Christian population is down to almost a third of what it once was .