Mosul air strike ‘kills 30’

BBC Online :At least 30 people have been killed in an air strike in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, reports say.Sources told the BBC the target was a prison used as a base by fighters from the Islamic State (IS), a jihadist group that seized Mosul in June.Some of those killed were being held by the militants, they said, adding that a drone might have been used.Iraqi state TV reported that at least 60 militants were killed and about 300 detainees were able to escape.Kurdish Peshmerga forces were also reportedly shelling eastern districts of Mosul and an area to the north-east on Wednesday. Earlier, a senior Kurdish official warned that 50,000 members of the Yazidi religious minority trapped in mountains to the west faceddeath if they were not rescued soon.The Yazidis fled to the mountains with little food or water after fighters from IS – previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) – overran the town of Sinjar at the weekend.”Urgent international action is needed to save them. Many of them – mainly the elderly, children and pregnant women – have died,” Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ministry in charge of the Peshmerga, told the Reuters news agency.On Tuesday, the UN said it had received credible reports that 40 Yazidi children had died “as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration” since Sunday.Iraqi army helicopters were reportedly delivering food and water to the area on Wednesday.Sinjar fell during an offensive that saw the IS and its allies seize several other towns in the north-west, an oil field and Iraq’s biggest dam, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Peshmerga.