U.S. fighter jets and drones repeatedly bombed Sunni Islamic extremists in northern Iraq on Friday, targeting what officials described as ISIS artillery units and convoys advancing on the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil.
The airstrikes ramped up America's involvement in Iraq where ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, is seizing control of towns and key infrastructure in an advance that has forced hundreds of thousands to run for their lives.
The critical Mosul Dam is now in the hands of ISIS fighters, authorities said, while 150 hundred miles to the east tens of thousands of Iraq's minority Yazidis were trapped on a mountain by ISIS fighters below who vowed to kill them.

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News of the second round of U.S. airstrikes came just after the governor of Irbil told CNN that ISIS may be as close as 30 kilometers (just over 18 miles) from the city of more than a million people.

The airstrikes began just hours after President Barack Obama authorized "targeted airstrikes," saying in a televised address late Thursday that the United States had an obligation to protect its personnel in Iraq and prevent a potential genocide of minority groups by ISIS.

Obama said there will be no buildup of U.S. combat troops in Iraq. "As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq," the President said.
Hitting ISIS
Two U.S. F/A 18 fighters first struck an ISIS artillery unit outside of Irbil, dropping two 500-pound laser-guided bombs at about 6:45 a.m. ET Friday, Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
Later, a drone targeted an ISIS mortar position, Kirby said. When ISIS fighters returned to the site a short time later, the drone struck the target again, he said.

Report: ISIS captures Iraq's largest dam
That was followed a short time later by a second round of airstrikes, carried out by four U.S. fighter jets, that targeted an ISIS convoy of seven vehicles and another mortar position, Kirby said.
The F/A 18s made two passes, dropping a total of eight laser-guided bombs, he said.
Before the ISIS onslaught, the region had been the most stable in Iraq and a cooperative ally of the United States. U.S. military advisers and consular personnel are stationed in Irbil.
At this point, the United States has hundreds of military personnel in Iraq, including advisers sent in recent weeks to coordinate with Iraqi and Kurdish military officials in response to the ISIS rampage. The USS George H.W. Bush and other Navy ships also are in the region, and the FA/18s in Friday's initial strike came from the aircraft carrier, officials said.

Airstrikes are "very important" because ISIS fighters are well-armed and are outgunning the Kurdish forces, thanks to the weapons the militants seized from the Iraqi military in Mosul, Irbil Gov. Nawzad Hadi said.
Map: Where is ISIS?
Even as the airstrikes were under way, there was news that ISIS militants captured Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam, just north of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. According to a senior Kurdish official, the militant fighters have been using U.S.-made weapons seized during fighting from the Iraqi army, including M1 Abrams tanks.

There had been conflicting reports about who controlled the dam on the Tigris River, with heavy fighting under way between ISIS fighters and Kurdish forces, known as Peshmerga. U.S. officials have warned that a failure of the dam would catastrophic, resulting in flooding all the way to Baghdad.
In other fighting, an Iraqi airstrike killed 45 ISIS fighters and injured 60 Friday in the northern town of Sinjar, the country's state-run National Media Center said.

Sinjar is the town that ISIS overran last weekend, forcing tens of thousands of Yazidis to flee into surrounding mountains without food, water or shelter and prompting concerns of a potential genocide. The Yazidis are of Kurdish descent, and their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.

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