Islamic extremists in Iraq killed 80 men from a Yazidi village and abducted their wives and children, eyewitnesses said today, insisting the religious community is still at risk after a week of US and Iraqi airstrikes on the militants.

Airstrikes pounded the area around Iraq’s largest dam today in an effort to drive out militants who captured it earlier this month, as reports emerged of the massacre of some 80 members of the Yazidi religious minority by Islamic extremists.

Iraq’s Mosul dam, held by the Islamic State group, is being targeted in airstrikes, residents there say.

Survivors of an attack on a northern village in Iraq say militants from the Islamic State group killed more than 80 Yazidi men there, officials in Iraq said.