Kurdish forces have pressed their biggest offensive against the Islamic State group so far, buoyed by US reports that jihadist supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's top aide in Iraq has been killed.
Kurdish peshmerga forces were securing the surroundings of Mount Sinjar after breaking a months-old jihadist siege of the northwestern region, while fighting was also reported near the city of Tall Afar further east.
The Pentagon said Thursday that US strikes had killed several top leaders of the group that proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq six months ago and rose to be the world's most feared jihadist organisation.
"I can confirm that since mid-November, targeted coalition air strikes successfully killed multiple senior and mid-level leaders," spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.
US officials said among those killed was Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, who was Baghdadi's deputy in charge of Iraq and would be the most senior IS leader to fall this year.
Kirby said strikes against the group's leadership were disrupting the jihadists' "ability to command and control current operations against" Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces.
The leaders of autonomous Kurdistan described the operation they have spearheaded since Wednesday as the most successful so far against the jihadists.
After the US-led coalition paved the way with some 50 air strikes, about 8000 peshmerga reclaimed some 700 square kilometres in the Zumar and Sinjar regions in two days.
Late Thursday, they reached Mount Sinjar, where thousands of fighters and civilians from the Yazidi minority had been besieged for months.
"The peshmerga have liberated around 70 per cent of the areas around Mount Sinjar, but the southern part of the Sinjar region is still under IS control," said Faisal Saleh, a Yazidi who has been stranded on the mountain with his family.
Khalaf Shamo, a Yazidi fighter also on the mountain, said the jihadists were destroying positions before withdrawing.
Mount Sinjar in August saw one of the most dramatic episodes of the six-month-old conflict in Iraq when tens of thousands of Yazidis were trapped there without food nor water.
Fears of a genocide against the small Kurdish-speaking minority were one of the reasons US President Barack Obama put forward for starting an air war against the jihadists.
The Iraqi portion of the jihadists' caliphate has shrunk in recent weeks, with central government troops and Shi'ite militia making significant gains in the east of the country and south of Baghdad.
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