Turkish drone strike kills senior leader of Yazidi militia in northern Iraq's Sinjar

A Turkish drone strike on the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq on Wednesday killed a senior leader of a Yazidi militia linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), local officials have said.

The security official from the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) and one of his guards were killed when the car they were travelling in through the town was struck at around midday, the Iraqi Kurdish regional government's counter-terror organisation said in a statement.

Wednesday's attack came just two days after a similar strike by Turkey in the area killed three fighters from the YBS, including a commander, in the Sinjar region.

Sinjar district, a heartland of Iraq's non-Muslim Yazidi minority, endured massacres and sex slavery during the brief but brutal rule of the Islamic State group in 2014.

The YBS is a locally recruited militia affiliated with both the PKK and Iraq's Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces, with whom it fought against IS.

Turkey has dozens of military facilities in northern Iraq for use in its war against the PKK, and it has repeatedly carried out strikes targeting the group in northern Iraq, where it has bases, and its allies.

The PKK, which seeks autonomy or independence for Turkey's Kurdish minority, has waged a violent insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984. It said it was temporarily halting its operations following the devastating 6 February earthquake that struck Turkey and neighbouring Syria.

Sinjar district lies outside the historic boundaries of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, but its Yazidi population is Kurdish-speaking.