Iranian media says a man has shot dead seven members of his wife's family in the southwestern city of Dezful.

The state-owned IRNA news agency said Sunday the shooter wielded a Kalashnikov rifle killing five men and two women, before shooting himself.

The agency reported the shooter survived and is in hospital, but did not release his name.

Gun violence is rare in Iran, where citizens are only allowed to own licensed hunting rifles.

In January 2017, a man gunned down five people in a rampage in the central Iranian city of Arak. A month earlier a man killed 10 relatives in a remote rural area in the country's south.