After fierce fighting Sunday, Kurdish fighters said they had taken back a key town in northern Iraq, using U.S. airstrikes to gain military advantage over ISIS militants, NBC News reported. The U.S. military hit more ISIS targets Sunday to defend Kurdish forces near Erbil, officials said. Iraq's human rights minister said Sunday that militants from ISIS have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi ethnic minority and had also buried some alive, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are trying to deal with what they see as a threat by Iraq's embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take control of the country after he made a surprise speech late Sunday accusing Iraq's new president of constitutional violations.
