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Update III:
The President has just authorized “targeted air strikes” to protect our troops and humanitarian efforts in Iraq. Watch video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFZHI01-oLs
UpdateII:
CNN reports that U.S. humanitarian air drops have begun over Iraq.
Update I:
The New York Times says that Kurdish officials report that U.S. forces have bombed at least two targets in northern Iraq on Thursday night to rout Islamist insurgents who have trapped tens of thousands of religious minorities in Kurdish areas:
Word of the bombings, reported on Kurdish television from the city of Erbil, came as President Obama was preparing to make a statement in Washington.
Kurdish officials said the bombings targeted fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria who had seized two towns, Gwer and Mahmour. Residents who had fled those areas by car were heard honking their horns in approval. But Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Twitter that the reports of the bombings were false.
(emphasis mine)
Original Post
About forty to fifty thousand members of the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq have been trapped by the Sunni Muslim group IS, formerly known as ISIS, in the mountains in Northern Iraq after fleeing the slaughter by IS.
Tens of thousands of other minorities, including Christians, are also fleeing the persecution, slaughter and other horrors posed by IS.
Sources such as the New York Times claim that the Yasidis have been “dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop” and are threatened with starvation.
There have been many pleas for the world to take immediate action to prevent these tens of thousands of people from dying or being slaughtered by IS.
The administration had been delaying taking any military action against ISIS until there is a new Iraqi government. Both White House and Pentagon officials have said privately that the United States would not intervene militarily until Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki stepped down.
But today, as reports surface that “about 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration” and other tales of massacres, the United States is planning to take action.
The Times:
President Obama is considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday.
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The president, in meetings with his national security team at the White House on Thursday morning, has been weighing a series of options ranging from dropping humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to military strikes on the fighters from ISIS now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said.
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“There could be a humanitarian catastrophe there,” a second administration official said, adding that a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently — this could be a fast-moving train.”
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The administration official said that “the president is weighing both passive and active options,” defining passive action as dropping humanitarian supplies. He added, using an alternative name for ISIS, “More active, we could target the ISIL elements that are besieging the base of the mountain.”
While Obama “made no mention of imminent military action…[t]op officials were in the meantime gathering at the White House to discuss the possible Iraq action,” and one official said that “any military action would be ‘limited, specific and achievable,’” according to the Times.
Read more here.
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
