Your trusted source

Kurdish forces backed by foreign jets pressed an ambitious operation against ISIS in northern Iraq Thursday, taking on the jihadis in the heart of their "caliphate," AFP reported.

After mass bombing by aircraft of the U.S.-led coalition paved the way for ground troops Wednesday, Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga retook several villages and closed in on the Sinjar area.

It was the capture of Sinjar by ISIS in early August, and the risk of genocide against its largely Yazidi minority population, that was one of the reasons U.S. President Barack Obama put forward for launching the air war against the jihadis.

Fresh strikes were conducted on Thursday north of Tal Afar, one of the first areas to fall to ISIS fighters in early June, Anwar Brahim, a senior officer with the Kurds' asayesh intelligence services, said.

"At around 7:00 am (0400 GMT), there were coalition strikes on Nahyat al-Ayadhiya," Brahim told AFP. "A large deployment of peshmerga is ready to close in on Sinjar."

Kurdish forces used heavy artillery to pound ISIS positions in the area but officials said the fighting was less intense than Wednesday.

The U.S. military command supervising the coalition air campaign said Wednesday that 61 airstrikes had been carried out in Iraq since Monday.