Obama: ‘We broke the ISIL siege’

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday the Islamist militant siege of Iraq’s Mount Sinjar had been broken and most U.S. military personnel sent to assess the situation would be pulled out of Iraq in coming days.

He told reporters he did not expect the United States to have to stage an evacuation of the mountain, where thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority had been trapped by militants, or to continue humanitarian airdrops.

“We broke the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) siege of Mount Sinjar,” Obama said.

“We helped innocent people reach safety and 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 that we are going to need to continue humanitarian airdrops on the mountain,” he said.

Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said it was too early to declare the crisis over. Improved security had allowed large numbers of Yazidis to escape Mount Sinjar, he said, but “some thousands” still needed help.

“The crisis on the mountain will not be over until everybody is able to come off that mountain to a safe and secure location in a safe and secure manner,” Dwyer said. He was speaking to Reuters by telephone from the Kurdish capital Arbil.

THOUSANDS REMAIN

Obama said the majority of military personnel who conducted the assessment of Mount Sinjar would leave Iraq in coming days.

The United States sent 130 military personnel to Arbil to draw up options ranging from a safe corridor for the Yazidis to an airlift to rescue them. A team of fewer than 20 U.S. personnel flew to Mount Sinjar to assess the situation.

The U.S. Defense Department said it believed 4,000-5,000 people remained on the narrow strip of craggy high ground more than 40 miles long, but said that up to 2,000 of them lived there and may want to stay.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to say whether and where any future U.S. air strikes in Iraq might take place, but said Obama had authorized the use of strikes to protect U.S. personnel anywhere in Iraq.

“The president has been clear. We’re not going to become Iraq’s air force.” Kirby told reporters.

The United Nations said it had raised the humanitarian emergency in Iraq to its highest level, putting it on a par with Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Working with local groups, U.N. agencies are providing food, water, shelter and medical care to those who have streamed into Kurdish-controlled territory since June when the Islamic State began its latest offensive.

Dwyer said some 400,000 Iraqis had fled to Dohuk Governorate close to the Turkish and Syrian borders. Iraq has 1.2 million displaced people and 1.5 million needing help, the United Nations says.

MARCH ON BAGHDAD

Islamic State militants are massing near the Iraqi town of Qara Tappa, 73 miles north of Baghdad, security sources and a local official said, in an apparent bid to broaden their front with Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The Sunni militants have made a dramatic push through the north to a position near Arbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The movement around Qara Tappa suggests they are getting more confident and seeking to grab more territory closer to the capital after stalling in that region.

“The Islamic State is massing its militants near Qara Tappa,” said one of the security sources. “It seems they are going to broaden their front with the Kurdish fighters.”

Islamic State has also been using tunnels built by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to secretly move fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq to towns just south of Baghdad.

The group, made up of Iraqis, other Arabs and foreign fighters has threatened to march on Baghdad, part of its ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East and impose its radical version of Islam.

U.S. SUPPORT

The governor of Iraq’s Sunni heartland Anbar Province said he has asked for and secured U.S. support in the battle against Islamic State militants because opponents of the group may not have the stamina for a long fight.

Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi told Reuters his request, made in meetings with U.S. diplomats and a senior military officer, included air support against the militants who have a tight grip on large parts of Anbar and the north.

Dulaimi said the Americans had promised to help.

“Our first goal is the air support. Their technology capability will offer a lot of intelligence information and monitoring of the desert and many things which we are in need of,” he said in a telephone interview.

“No date was decided but it will be very soon and there will be a presence for the Americans in the western area.”

The was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.

SAS DEPLOYED

Britain has deployed SAS special forces in northern Iraq where thousands of civilians are trapped on a mountain by Sunni militant fighters, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

Citing Britain’s trade envoy to Iraq, Emma Nicholson, the paper said that officers from the Special Air Service (SAS), the army’s special forces regiment, were working with U.S. troops to gather intelligence and had been in Iraq for about six weeks.

When asked about the newspaper report, a spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces operations.

Britain has sent military planes and helicopters to the region to help deliver humanitarian aid.

Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his summer holiday on Wednesday to say that Britain would be involved in any international plan to rescue refugees from the Yazidi religious minority.

The Yazidi have been forced into the Sinjar mountain range by the advance of Islamic State fighters into the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The United States has said that a mission to rescue the refugees was far less likely than originally thought after an assessment team sent on Wednesday sound the humanitarian situation was not as grave as expected.

Reuters