Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - An air strike killed 15 women on Friday at a shrine near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, local officials and medics said.

"Fifteen women were killed and another 50 wounded in a raid that targeted a Shiite place of worship at Dakuk," local council chief Amir Huda Karam told AFP.

The toll from the afternoon raid was confirmed by Dr Abbas Mustafa Dakuki at the local hospital, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kirkuk.

Earlier, jihadists of the Islamic State group attacked Kirkuk in an apparent effort to divert thousands of troops and militiamen closing in on their stronghold in Mosul, Iraq's second city.