Militants’ Siege on Mountain in Iraq Is Over, Pentagon Says
HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the Islamic militants’ siege of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape.
An initial report from about a dozen Marines and Special Operations forces who arrived on Tuesday and spent 24 hours on the northern Iraqi mountain said that “the situation is much more manageable,” a senior Defense official said in an interview.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters Wednesday night at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., said it was “far less likely now” that the United States would undertake a rescue mission because the assessment team reported far fewer Yazidis on the mountain than expected, and that those still there were in relatively good condition.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, credited American airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops as well as efforts of the Kurdish pesh merga fighters in allowing “thousands of Yazidis to evacuate from the mountain each night over the last several days” and to escape the militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
With humanitarian crises around the world, a look at why President Obama decided to use military force to help the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq.
Administration officials said that several thousand Yazidis remained on the mountain, not the tens of thousands who originally were there. Some of the people on Mount Sinjar indicated to American forces that they considered the mountain to be a place of refuge and a home and did not want to leave, a second United States official said. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/world/middleeast/iraq-yazidi-refugees.html?_r=0