On Sunday, fighting between Kurdish peshmerga forces and the "Islamic State" (IS) was under way near the northern city of Mosul. There, IS fighters have controlled the nearby dam - Iraq's largest - since August 7.

The US military launched nine airstrikes late Saturday night to the clear the way for the Kurdish fighters.

Despite the roadside bombs that continue to hinder their advance, the Kurdish fighters had been able to take large parts of the damn by midday on Sunday.

"Half of the Mosul dam area was retaken, the eastern part," the Kurdish official Kawa Khatari told the news agency AFP.

IS's control of the dam, which lies on the Tigris River some 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Mosul, has raised fears that the jihadists will use it as a weapon by threatening to flood as far as Iraq's capital, Baghdad. However, with Mosul under IS control, such a move would at present prove counterproductive.

Steinmeier: Iraq should remain unified

In an interview published on Sunday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier emphasized the importance of helping Iraq defend itself so that it may stabilize politically and remain one unified state.

The key to peace in Iraq was "the formation of a new government ... in which all regions and religions find themselves again and which defend themselves effectively against [IS]," Steinmeier told the German weekly Bild am Sonntag.

During Steinmeier's visit to Iraq over the weekend, the first of four shipments of humanitarian aid from Germany arrived in then northern city of Irbil. Steinmeier noted that Germany "wasn't ruling anything out," but, as far as an EU arms agreement was concerned, Berlin must first assess the military needs of the Kurdish fighters before agreeing to send any weapons to the region.

The lightning advance of IS militants this summer flourished in part due to a political system weakened by a government that had overwhelmingly favored the country's majority Shiite Muslim population. Reversing the distrust and resentment among the minority Sunni and Kurdish populations now plays as important a role in the search for a solution toward a peaceful Iraq as the military solutions needed to drive out IS.

When asked if Iraq's already autonomous Kurdish region would emerge as an independent state, the German foreign minister warned that such a move could prove counterproductive.

"An independent Kurdish state would further destabilize the region and give rise to new tensions, possibly with Iraq's neighboring countries," he said.

Much of the recent fighting has taken place in Iraqi Kurdistan. The IS takeover of towns has driven out much of the local Christian and Yazidi populations. The news agency Reuters reported on Sunday that Kurdish forces have been training Yazidi recruits for the conflict.

kms/mkg (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)