Liberating force: A member of the Kurdish forces in Kasr Reej, Iraq. Photo: AP

Washington: Several Islamic State group leaders have been killed in US air strikes in northern Iraq in recent weeks.

"These are high-value targets, senior leadership," US General Martin Dempsey told the Wall Street Journal.

The jihadist leaders killed did not include chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Effective troops: Members of the Kurdish security forces take part in a patrol in Zumar, east of Sinjar. Photo: Reuters

The newspaper, quoting unnamed officials, said between December 3 to December 9, air raids killed a man known as Abd al-Basit, the head of the group's military operations in Iraq, and Haji Mutazz, a deputy to Baghdadi. A third figure, Radwin Talib, the IS group's leader overseeing the city of Mosul, was killed in a strike in late November.

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The strikes were part of "degrading" IS's ability to command and control their forces, a US defence official said.

Meanwhile, Kurdish peshmerga fighters, backed by US air strikes, have fought their way to Iraq's Sinjar mountain and freed hundreds of people trapped there by IS, Kurdish leader Masrour Barzani said on Thursday.

"A vast area has been liberated," said Mr Barzani, the head of the Iraqi Kurdish region's national security council, adding that 100 Islamic State fighters had been killed.

"Now a corridor is open and hopefully the rest of the [Sinjar] region will be freed from Islamic State."

Hundreds of people from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority had been besieged on the mountain since IS militants stormed Sinjar and other Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq in August.

"All those Yazidis that were trapped on the mountain are now free," Mr Barzani said. The peshmerga had not yet begun to evacuate them, he added.

The Kurds have yet to take back the actual town of Sinjar, but the freeing of the Yazidis from the mountain is a victory for the Kurds.

AFP, Reuters