US airstrikes target IS militants in northern Iraq
The airstrikes target militant positions near Iraq's largest hydroelectric facility, known as Mosul Dam.
MOSUL, Iraq
A U.S. airstrike on Islamic State positions in northern Iraq killed 11 militants early Saturday, according to an Iraqi health official.
"Eleven Islamic State militants were killed and nine others were wounded in a U.S. airstrike on militant positions near Mosul Dam, 50 kilometers north of Mosul," Dr. Walid Jasim from Mosul state hospital told The Anadolu Agency.
Militants captured the Mosul Dam, the country's largest hydroelectric facility, on August 6, a move that intensified concerns about the risk of flooding in the city.
The dam is at the heart of the water and power network in a large area surrounding the country's capital, Baghdad.
The airstrike came a day after U.S. military jets reportedly destroyed two Islamic State armed vehicles near the northern town of Sinjar after receiving reports from Kurdish forces.
A U.S. Central Command statement Friday said that Kurdish forces reported that militants from the Islamic State were attacking civilians in the village of Kawju, south of Sinjar -- about 125 kilometers west of Mosul.
The militants killed around 80 Ezidi men in the village of Kawju and kidnapped an unknown number of women, according to Reuters news agency.
"They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing in the afternoon of Friday," Reuters quoted Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, as saying.
U.S. aircraft identified Islamic State armed vehicles on a roadside south of Sinjar and, at about 10:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1410GMT), the jets destroyed two of the vehicles.
Sinjar is the ancestral home of the Ezidi minority, an eclectic religious sect fusing Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Jewish, Nestorian Christian and Islamic elements.
The self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, seeks to establish a caliphate in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria, erasing national boundaries drawn by Europeans in the wake of World War I.
The group captured Mosul in June and then surged across northern Iraq, taking control of several predominantly Sunni cities.
The U.S. has launched several airstrikes on the Islamic State and its equipment since last week when President Barack Obama authorized U.S. forces to protect U.S. facilities in Erbil and allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians threatened by the militants.
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