Thursday, August 14, 2014

Thousands of Yazidis Evacuated from Mount Sinjar

The Pentagon said Wednesday that U.S. airstrikes and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters had broken the Islamic State’s siege of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape. (The New York Times, 14 August)

On Tuesday, a dozen U.S. Marines and Special Operations forces landed on Mount Sinjar to assess the situation and confirmed that there were far fewer Yazidis on the mountain than expected. The Pentagon credited U.S. airstrikes and Peshmerga fighters for allowing thousands of Yazidis to evacuate from the mountains each night over the past several days.


Photo credit: Displaced yazidis crossing Iraq-Syria border on Wednesday. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP-Getty Images/New York Times)

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