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 forces, known as Peshmerga, were also reportedly shelling eastern districts of Mosul and an area to the north-east on Wednesday.
Thousands trapped

Earlier, a senior Kurdish official warned that 50,000 members of the Yazidi religious minority trapped in mountains to the west faced death 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.

Government officials said 77 tonnes of food and water had been air-dropped in the area since Tuesday.

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.

A senior official in Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said fighters from the Syria-based Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) had launched a counter-offensive.

"The fighters of [the PYD] and the PKK are responsible for confronting [the Islamic State] in Rabia and the Sinjar area," Hallo Penjweny told the AFP news agency. "On our side, we are taking care of Zumar and the rest of the area north and east of Mosul."

Mr Yawar said Peshmerga fighters were also attacking IS positions in Makhmur, south-west of the Kurdistan Region's capital of Irbil, and that military co-operation with Baghdad had been re-established.

Ties were strained by the KRG's decision to send Peshmerga forces into disputed areas of northern Iraq in June after soldiers abandoned their posts in the face of the IS advance; a push by Kurdish leaders for an independence referendum; and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's claim in July that they were giving sanctuary to extremists.

Kurds have also joined Sunni Arabs and some Shia in calling on Mr Maliki to step down because of his handling of the crisis, as well as what they say are the sectarian and authoritarian policies he has pursued.

But as the leader of the bloc that won the most seats in April's parliamentary elections, Mr Maliki has demanded the right to attempt to form a governing coalition.

In a televised address on Wednesday, he said any unconstitutional attempt to form a new government would "open the gates of hell".

BBC