US jets strike Islamic State militants near Iraq's largest dam

US fighter jets launched air strikes near Iraq's largest dam Saturday, killing up to 15 fighters from the Islamic State group, media reports said.

The jets bombed IS positions in four areas near the dam as well as in Rabia crossing, Mahmoudia, Telskouf, Zumar and Tilkef, Rudaw News reported.

There were suggestions that the attack near the Mosul Dam was the beginning of a US military operation to help the Kurdish forces, Peshmerga, retake it from the self-declared militants, who captured it earlier this month and thereby gained control over the water and electricity supply in the north of the country.

A Peshmerga eyewitness told Rudaw News this is the heaviest US bombing - encompassing 32 kilometres-  of militant positions since the start of airstrikes against the Islamist group last week.

A gas station used by IS militants to fuel their vehicles and a major junction leading to Mosul were targeted by the US fighter jets, causing the IS militants have abandoned their posts under the heavy bombardment, reported Rudaw.

At the same time Kurdish Peshmerga forces are expected to launch a ground assault to retake areas lost to the IS earlier this month including the Yezidi town of Shingal.

"We understand from our Peshmerga sources on the ground that they are also trying to push in. As the US bombs these positions, the Kurdish forces are trying to retake territory lost to the Islamic State," Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Irbil, the capital of Kurdish regional government said.

The airstrikes were been launched amid fresh reports of an Islamic State-led "massacre" against residents belonging to the Yazidi religious minority, killing around 80 people.

The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group, has in the recent months seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate.

Its swift push to the borders of Iraq's autonomous ethnic Kurdish region and towards Baghdad prompted President Barack Obama to authorise air strikes on the group's strongholds earlier this month.

Since then, US military aircraft have carried out several bombings and air-dropped food and water to help tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the fighters' advance.