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For almost a week now, U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish military have been in a battle to save tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children — members of the Yazidi sect — trapped by ISIL terrorists in the Sinjar Mountains of Northern Iraq.
In what can be rightly called the battle for Mount Sinjar, the military have employed both air strikes to kill the terrorists who have been slaughtering and, now, besieging the Yazidis, and air drops of food and water in an attempt to save thousands of lives.
As in any military combat or rescue operation of this kind and scale, there are always risks involved and, as has been said before, these brave men — and perhaps women, too — are risking life and limb to protect Iraqis from ISIL forces and to provide them with life-saving humanitarian aid — and, hopefully, with rescue and safe passage.
Sadly, there is word that just such a tragedy has occurred on Mount Sinjar.
A helicopter carrying aid from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous government to stranded Yazidi refugees in the Sinjar Mountains of northern Iraq crashed on Tuesday, killing the pilot and injuring other passengers, including a Yazidi member of Parliament and a New York Times journalist.
According to the Times, the helicopter, “with a four-person crew from Iraqi Kurdistan’s pesh merga militia force, had just delivered emergency aid and picked up 20 to 25 Yazidi evacuees when it crashed shortly after it took off from the remote mountainous region…The aircraft landed upside down and survivors had to crawl out of the wreckage.”
The survivors were taken by two rescue helicopters to a pesh merga base where they were transferred to ambulances and taken to a hospital in Zakho, a town near the Turkish border, says the Times.
Adam Ferguson, a freelance photographer working for The Times says that the aircraft may have been overloaded, but Fouad Hussein, the chief of staff for the president of the Kurdistan region, “attributed the crash to an accidental loss of control by the pilot when the aircraft hit a boulder as it was lifting off.”
In the meantime, the battle to save the Yazidi refugees continues with more than 14 humanitarian airdrops since August 7 and with and with more than 15 targeted airstrikes, including F-15E Strike Eagles, F/A-18 Super Hornets and MQ-1 Predators, against the ISIL terrorists.
In addition, more than 60 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft are supporting coalition efforts in Iraq, with about 50 to 60 ISR flights being conducted daily by U.S. aircraft, according to the Department of Defense.
Lead image: Air drop by a C-130 Hercules. File photo DoD
