Sinjar Mountains

US President Barack Obama on August 9 vowed to continue air strikes against Iraqi jihadists if needed to protect US diplomats and military advisors.
 
Speaking in his weekly address, Obama said that he had authorized the strikes in Iraq to protect US personnel serving in the northern city of Arbil. "And, if necessary, that’s what we will continue to do," he said.
 

U.S. jets struck jihadist positions in northern Iraq on Aug. 8, a potential turning point in a two-month crisis Washington said was threatening to result in genocide and to expose U.S. assets.

Ankara aids Yazidis holed up against jihadists seeking to massacre them, dropping supplies on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq The Turkish government airdropped humanitarian aid to thousands of members of the Yazidi community on Aug.

Thousands of Yazidis and Turkmens have fled jihadist depravity only to face death from starvation and lack of water in Iraq’s searing summer heat Thousands of Yazidis and Turkmens are marooned in the Sinjar Mountain area without food and water after the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar following the retreat of the peshmerga.

The U.N. Security Council on Aug. 5 condemned attacks by jihadists in northern Iraq, warning those responsible could face trial for crimes against humanity, amid fears the besieged Yazidi minority could be wiped out.

Forty children from northern Iraq's Yazidi minority are reported to have died as a result of a jihadist attack on the Sinjar region, the United Nations Children's Fund said Aug. 5.