– Mountain siege ends –
President Barack Obama said a week of US air strikes had broken the siege on a northern mountain where civilians had been hiding from jihadists for more than 10 days.
The ordeal of tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Yazidi minority, was one of the dramatic chapters of the devastating two-month conflict and one of the reasons Obama sent warplanes back over Iraq, three years after pulling his troops out.
“We helped save many innocent lives. Because of these efforts, we do not expect there to be an additional operation to evacuate people off the mountain and it’s unlikely we’re going to need to continue humanitarian air drops on the mountain,” Obama said.
He had warned that a massacre on Mount Sinjar could lead to a genocide against the vulnerable Yazidi minority, whose members are now largely massing into camps in autonomous Kurdistan. READ: 40 Yazidi children reported dead after Iraq attack.
The Pentagon said 4,000 to 5,000 Yazidis remained on the mountain, which they hold to be the final resting place of Noah’s Ark, but explained 2,000 “reside there and may not want to leave”.
Obama added that the air strikes, first launched on August 8, would go on.
EU ministers were set to convene in Brussels on Friday to seek unanimous approval for the shipment of arms to Iraqi Kurds fighting the Islamic State jihadists.
The unscheduled gathering comes after days of forceful demands by France, whose Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticised EU colleagues for remaining on holiday while besieged civilians were being killed in Iraq.
Britain would “favourably consider” arming Kurdish forces in their battle against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq, a spokesman for the British prime minister’s office said on Thursday.
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