Senior leaders from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are growing uneasy about an internal rebellion against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership style, which has punctured his aura of invincibility and threatens to weaken him further.

Kurdish peshmerga forces backed by U.S. air strikes seized the Iraqi town of Sinjar from Islamic State on Friday, a Reuters witness said, in one of the most significant counter-attacks since the militants swept through the north last year.

Islamic State militants committed genocide against Iraq's Yazidis in the north of the country and carried out crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes against other minorities, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said on Thursday.