IRBIL, Iraq — Air strikes pounded the area around Iraq’s largest dam on Saturday 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.

Residents near the Mosul Dam said that the area was being targeted by airstrikes, but it was not immediately clear whether the attacks were being carried out by Iraq’s air force or the U.S., which last week launched an air campaign aimed at halting the advance of the Islamic State group across the country’s north.

The extremist group seized the dam on the Tigris River on Aug. 7. Residents near the dam say the airstrikes killed militants, but that could not immediately be confirmed.

Meanwhile, a Yazidi lawmaker and a Kurdish security official said Islamic State fighters massacred scores of Yazidi men Friday afternoon after seizing the village of Kocho.

Both said they based their information on the accounts of survivors and warned that the minority group remains in danger despite U.S. aid drops and airstrikes launched to protect them.

Islamic State fighters besieged the village for several days and gave its Yazidi residents a deadline to convert to Islam, Yazidi lawmaker Mahma Khalil said Saturday.

“When the residents refused to do this, the massacre took place,” he said.