ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

US launches air strikes against militants in Iraq

Latest
Live
In maps
US back in Iraq
Who are the Yazidis?
Why Irbil matters
Eyewitness
Rise of IS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28709792

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East
The United States has carried out air strikes on Islamist militants in Iraq, as James Robbins reports

The US has launched two additional air strikes against militants from the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Iraq, the Pentagon has said.

US drones and Navy fighter jets attacked targets near the Kurdish city of Irbil - a similar location to the first strike earlier on Friday.

The Sunni Muslim group IS has taken control of swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Tens of thousands of people from minority groups have fled their homes due to the militants' advance.

IS, formerly known as Isis, has also seized Iraq's largest dam.

These air strikes are the first time the US has been directly involved in a military operation in Iraq since American troops withdrew in late 2011.

Convoy targeted

In the second wave of strikes, US drones destroyed a mortar position and killed a group of militants, the Pentagon said.

Then just over an hour later, F/A-18 jets used laser-guided bombs to hit a seven-vehicle convoy of IS vehicles, spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.

Earlier on Friday, two 500lb (227kg) bombs were dropped on IS artillery being used against forces defending Irbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region.

Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the US state department, told the BBC that the immediate goal of the strikes was to "prevent the advance" of IS towards Irbil.

"Then longer term obviously we want to work to provide some time and space for the Kurdish forces to get back on their feet and fight this threat on their own," she said.

"There's not really a long term US military solution here."

IS recently seized towns held by Kurdish "Peshmerga" forces, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee into the mountains.

Although the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Region have been at odds for months, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki sent a plane load of ammunition to Irbil on Friday, Reuters reported.

Mr Maliki has previously ordered the air force to support Kurdish fighters in their fight against IS.

The White House said Vice-President Joe Biden had called Iraqi President Fuad Masum on Friday and reiterated President Obama's commitment to help Iraqi civilians and bolster Iraq's ability to fight IS forces.

Earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the world needed to wake up to the threat posed by the IS group.

He said its "campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yazidi and Christian minorities" showed "all the warning signs of genocide".

British government sources told the BBC the air strikes were entirely "a US operation" and the UK was currently focused on humanitarian efforts.

While future participation in air strikes had not be ruled out, it had not been discussed by the UK government's emergency committee Cobra on Friday, and would not be over the weekend, the sources said.

Air drops

IS fighters seized Qaraqosh, Iraq's biggest Christian town this week, causing thousands to flee. The militants' advance also forced tens of thousands of Yazidis to escape to mountains near Sinjar.

Late on Thursday, US military planes dropped food and water to help the displaced Yazidis.

Ali Herfot, who has fled to the Sinjar mountains, says he is worried and frightened

Iraq's human rights ministry says the militants have seized hundreds of Yazidi women.

Ministry spokesman Kamil Amin, quoted by AP news agency, said some were being held in schools in Iraq's second largest city Mosul.

Back in June, when Isis took over Mosul, Mr Maliki requested US air strikes to halt the militants' advance - but Washington did not intervene.

Analysts say the relentless advance of IS fighters, together with the continuing failure of Iraqi politicians to agree on a new government after an election in April, may have swayed Mr Obama.

Mr Maliki has faced calls from Sunni Arab, Kurdish and some Shia Arab leaders to step down because of his handling of the crisis.

But as leader of the bloc that won the most seats in April's parliamentary elections, he has demanded the right to attempt to form a governing coalition.

Full article and photos:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28715142

[Anthea]

Telegraph

Iraq crisis: The streets of Erbil’s newly Christian suburb are now full of helpless people

Despite many fleeing to Erbil, there is fear Islamic State, formerly ISIS, will advance and even the Kurdish capital is not safe

The last day of Qaraqosh’s time as a Christian town, a time almost as old as Christianity itself, began with a mortar shell at nine in the morning.

It came through the roof of Melad and Marven Abdullah’s house on Wednesday, killing them instantly. Melad was nine; his cousin, Marven, four. The mortar struck Marven in the head as it landed. They found his arms and feet, crushed against the wall, but nothing else.

The family’s next-door neighbour, Enam Eshoo, had popped in to deliver some fresh drinking water; she too died where she fell.

The day ended with an order to evacuate. Within a couple of hours, the city’s tens of thousands of inhabitants were crowding the road to Kurdistan, fighting with troops manning checkpoints, trying to find shelter where they could.

The streets of the capital Erbil’s newly Christian suburb, Ainkawa, swelled by exiles from ten years of punishing terror and oppression in northern Iraq, are now full of stunned and helpless people. They are camping on the floors of church halls, in a building site, in the street. An old woman was sleeping in a flower bed. Another begged for help.

“Please take me home,” the woman, Azat Mansur, said. It was not clear what she meant by “home”; it sounded more spiritual than real, since her home is now under the control of the jihadists of the Islamic State.

“I can’t stay here any more, or anywhere else. They are going to kill us. They will cut our heads off, if we stay here.”

There is great fear that the advance of the jihadists of the Islamic State is not over, that even Erbil is not safe, two days after the jihadists advanced to within 30 miles.

Mrs Mansur knows them directly, having fled their June advance into Mosul, from where she and all the other Christians were expelled. The jihadists stole $2,000 and her mobile phone at a checkpoint before they let her go, she added.

The refugees plead for help from the West, but when it is offered, they react with an angry despair.

“The Pope says he wants Peace,” said Mazen Elias Abdullah, the father of nine-year-old Melad. “Well, if he lives in Peace, perhaps he could take us there. We don’t want to live here any more. We would like to live in Peace too.”

Qaraqosh is, or was, the largest of a triangle of Christian towns north and east of Mosul, in fact the largest Christian town in Iraq.

It has been Christian since the earliest years of the faith.

Islamic State, the ultra-jihadist al-Qaeda off-shoot that now controls large parts of the country, first tried to attack in late June, after its sweep through Sunni areas of the north and west.

In that case, they were beaten back, or at least did not press their assault. It seemed for a while as if their forces were stretched thinly, bolstered by their allies in the primarily Sunni tribes of western Iraq but not able to reach into areas where those tribes had no interest, such as Kurdish or Christian regions. The promised attack on Baghdad never materialised, either.

But that assessment was wrong. In the last three weeks, IS has made substantial gains in both Syria and against the Kurds, seizing 17 towns in the last week alone, according to their own account, and Mosul Dam, the country’s largest.

Last weekend, they sent the entire population of another beleaguered minority, the Yazidis, into flight north-west of Mosul. Thousands are still camped out on a mountainside, surrounded, starving and awaiting some form of deliverance.

The residents of Qaraqosh had feared they were next in line, but even so, events happened faster than they expected.

Mr Abdullah, a member of the local home guard, was on duty when the mortar hit on Wednesday morning. “There was blood and flesh on the ground,” he said, as he stood in the gardens of St Joseph’s Cathedral in Ainkawa, a church of the Chaldean Catholics, one of Iraq’s patchwork of sects. He himself, like most in Qaraqosh, is from the Assyrian Catholic church.

Alongside Marven and Melad, who was killed by shrapnel in the head and chest, Anas, Mr Abdullah’s seven-year-old younger son, was also seriously injured.

The mortars landed all Wednesday, and families began to pack up and leave. The Abdullah family and the relatives of Enam Eshoo stayed on for the funeral, which was held in the Church of the Virgin Mary at 5pm.

There has been a church on the site since the earliest years; it was mentioned by travellers in the 12 Century.

Not long after the funeral, a mortar landed outside the church’s front gate.

Shortly after that again, a ticker tape notice on the satellite news channels flashed a warning, said one resident, Wissam Isaac. Mr Isaac worked at a Qaraqosh primary school, teaching the local Syriac language, derived from Aramaic, the language of Christ.

The ticker said the Kurdish army, the Peshmerga, on whom the residents had been relying for their defence, was withdrawing.

“Before this time, no-one really thought we would have to leave,” he said. “We trusted the Peshmerga. They said they would save us. They stayed in our houses. We can’t believe this has happened.”

There is clearly suspicion at the motives of the Peshmerga. The threat did not seem to match the precipitous retreat of a force vaunted as the strongest in the country.

One man who, stuck with an injured foot, is among the less than 100 people to remain in the town, said there were comparatively few jihadists there, “mostly young, with beards from centuries ago”, according to his cousin, who had spoken to him by phone before his battery ran out. The town has no more electricity.

Whatever the reasoning, the withdrawal gave the residents little choice. “We are not trained to fight,” Mr Isaac said. “We do not have guns. Maybe we should have had guns.”

He took to his car with his mother, his three brothers, and their families. The roads were chaotic, jammed, and blocked by Kurdish checkpoints trying to control the flow of refugees and to prevent jihadists coming through into their territory under their cover.

At least one man died as fights broke out at the main Kalak checkpoint, residents said.

On arrival in Erbil, they had little but the clothes they came in.

Some, from Qaraqosh and other towns like Karamlis, Bartella and Tel Kayf, had previously fled Mosul, like Mrs Mansur. Several spoke of having their savings, their gold jewellery, even their cars, taken before they were allowed to leave by the Islamic State checkpoints.

Mazen Abdullah’s brother, Adeeb, who worked on the Mosul Dam, said when the group took that he had to pay it $10,000 not to conscript his son, even though he was Christian.

The Islamic State has clear rules on how it divides up such booty: one-fifth to the group’s coffers, and the rest divided between the fighters, according to one statement posted online.

It is fair to report that there was no great time of peace in Qaraqosh’s long history. The presence of the Christians, mostly ethnic Assyrians, descended from the Plain of Ninevah’s earliest inhabitants, has often been challenged by its neighbours - newcomers, in their view - who were also, in Ottoman times, its overlords.

They have been driven out before by Persians, by Kurds, and by Turks, and survived an attempt to expropriate the place wholesale by a local Ottoman Pasha. They always fought back, or came back.

But now international travel has given the Christians more options.

Everyone here has relatives in Germany, or Australia, or Michigan; most want to join them. There is a community in Britain, many of the children of soldiers who fought with the British in the late empire’s Middle Eastern wars.

Today, ethnic cleansing has a feeling of permanence.

“Without our homeland, we face extinction as a people,” said Mardean Isaac, a British-Assyrian writer. “We are watching our last chance for survival disappear.”

Sitting on the floor of an Ainkawa church hall, watched over by a statue of the Virgin Mary, Bassma Yousef said she could barely find milk for her 20-day-old baby, Mervy, let alone food for the rest of her family. The thousands of people here are eager for hand-outs from aid organisations, the United Nations, or anyone who can help them, before they leave and move on, as they feel they must.

They are less interested in the two bombs that Washington finally dropped on the Islamic State on Friday, regarding them as too little, too late.

Mrs Mansur said an army was needed, not just an air force. “America is powerful,” she said. “They have the weapons.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... eople.html

[Anthea]

Reuters
By Michael Georgy

Islamist rebels repairing Mosul dam, Kurds in rush to arms

Islamic State insurgents who seized Iraq's biggest dam in a offensive that has caused international consternation have brought in engineers for repairs, witnesses said on Saturday, as nervous Kurds stocked up on arms to defend their enclave nearby.

The jihadi Islamists have captured wide swathes of northern Iraq since June, executing non-Sunni Muslim captives, displacing tens of thousands of people and drawing the first U.S. air strikes in the region since Washington withdrew troops in 2011.

After routing Kurdish forces earlier this week, Islamic State militants are just 30 minutes' drive from Arbil, the Kurdish regional capital which up to now has been spared the sectarian bloodshed that has scarred other parts of Iraq for a decade.

Employees of foreign oil firms in Arbil were flying out. Kurds were snapping up AK-47 assault rifles in arms markets for fear of imminent attack, although these had been ineffective against Islamic State fighters with superior firepower.

Given the Islamic State threat, a source in the Kurdistan Regional Government said it had received extra supplies of heavy weaponry from the Baghdad federal government "and other governments" in the past few days, but declined to elaborate.

An engineer at Mosul dam told Reuters that Islamic State fighters had brought in engineers to repair an emergency power line to the city, Iraq's biggest in the north, that had been cut off four days ago, causing power outages and water shortages.

"They are gathering people to work at the dam," he said.

A dam administrator said that militants were putting up the trademark Islamic State black flags and patrolling with flatbed trucks mounted with machineguns to protect the facility they seized from Kurdish forces earlier this week.

The Islamic State, comprised mainly of Arabs and foreign fighters who want to reshape the map of the Middle East, pose the biggest threat to Iraq, a major oil exporter, since Saddam Hussein was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The Sunni militants, who have beheaded and crucified captives in their drive to eradicate unbelievers, first arrived in northern Iraq in June from Syria where they have captured wide tracts of territory in that country's civil war.

Almost unopposed by U.S.-trained Iraqi government forces who fled by the thousands, the insurgents swept through the region and have threatened to march on Baghdad with Iraqi military tanks, armoured personnel carriers and machineguns they seized.

In their latest offensive, they also grabbed a fifth oilfield that will help them fund operations, in addition to several towns and the dam, which could allow them to flood

cities and cut off vital water and electricity supplies.

The U.S. Defense Department said two F/A-18 warplanes from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf had dropped laser-guided 500-pound bombs on Islamic State artillery batteries. Other air strikes targeted mortar positions and an Islamic State convoy.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the action was needed to halt the Islamist advance, protect Americans in the region as well as hundreds of thousands of Christians and members of other religious minorities who have fled for their lives.

U.S. military aircraft also dropped relief supplies to members of the ancient Yazidi sect, tens of thousands of whom have collected on a desert mountaintop seeking shelter from insurgents who had ordered them to convert or die.

IRAQ'S UNITY AT RISK

The territorial gains of Islamic State, who also control a third of Syria and have fought this past week inside Lebanon, has unnerved the Middle East and threatens to tear apart Iraq, a country split between mostly Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Attention has focused on the plight of Yazidis, Christians and other minority groups in northern Iraq, one of the most demographically diverse parts of the Middle East for centuries.

In Washington, the Pentagon said planes dropped additional bundles of supplies, bringing the total to 36,224 ready-to-eat meals and 6,822 gallons of drinking water, for threatened civilians near Sinjar, home of the Yazidis. They are ethnic Kurds who practice an ancient faith related to Zoroastrianism.

The Islamic State considers them to be "devil worshippers". After fighters ordered them to leave, convert or die, most fled their towns and villages to camp out on Sinjar mountain, an arid peak where they believe Noah settled after the biblical flood.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region has until now been the only part of Iraq to survive the past decade of civil war without a serious security threat. Its vaunted "peshmerga" fighters - those who "confront death" - also controlled wide stretches of territory outside the autonomous zone, which served as sanctuary for fleeing Christians and other minorities when Islamic State fighters stormed into the region last month.

But the past week saw the peshmerga crumble in the face of Islamic State, which had heavy weapons seized from Iraqi army troops that abandoned their posts in June. In addition, the insurgents are flush with cash looted from banks.

A U.N. relief spokesman said some 200,000 people fleeing the Islamists' advance had reached the town of Dohuk on the Tigris River in Iraqi Kurdistan. Tens of thousands had fled further north to the Turkish border, Turkish officials said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki is a Shi'ite Islamist accused by opponents of fuelling the Sunni insurgency by running an authoritarian sectarian state.

He has refused to step aside to break a stalemate since elections in April, defying pressure from Washington and Tehran.

Obama, who brought U.S. troops home from Iraq in 2011 to fulfill a campaign pledge, insisted he would not commit ground forces against Islamic State and had no intention of letting the United States "get dragged into fighting another war in Iraq".

But questions swirled in Washington about whether selective air strikes on the positions of highly mobile, guerrilla-like militants and humanitarian air drops would be enough to shift the balance on the battlefield against Islamic State.

((Map of Iraq showing status of control of towns and cities under siege by Sunni militants, highlights oil and gas infrastructure: link.reuters.com/dag62w))

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/0 ... L620140809

[Anthea]

BBC News UK

A cargo plane has left RAF Brize Norton carrying British humanitarian aid to Iraq, the BBC understands.

The aid drops are part of an £8m package of aid announced by the UK government.

Members of the Yazidi community trapped on a mountainside in northern Iraq will be among those to receive assistance.

It comes as the government's emergency Cobra committee prepares to meet to discuss the response to the conflict in Iraq.
'Brutal persecution'

The BBC understands the meeting will be chaired by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. It is understood talks will focus on the humanitarian aid effort announced by the government on Friday.

There is also likely to be a broader discussion about the situation in Iraq.

Prime Minister David Cameron has welcomed US air strikes against militants from the Islamic State (IS) - a group formerly known as Isis, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

He has ruled out any UK military action.

The United States has carried out air strikes on Islamist militants in Iraq, as James Robbins reports

IS has recently made fresh gains in northern Iraq and is threatening the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region, Irbil.

The latest UK aid package brings the country's total support to the humanitarian effort in Iraq to £13m.

Supplies including drinking water and tents will be dropped from C130 aircraft over the weekend.

Yazidis follow an ancient faith that IS condemns as devil worship.

Thousands of members of the minority have fled into the mountains from the Islamist militants, who are reported by Iraq's human rights ministry to have seized hundreds of Yazidi women.

Ali Herfot, who fled to the Sinjar mountains, says he is worried and frightened

International Development Secretary Justine Greening said the world had been "horrified by the brutal persecution of vulnerable minority groups" in Iraq.

"Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and we are extremely concerned for their safety," she said.

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said that while Downing Street could not rule out military action indefinitely, the mood was not "gung-ho" ahead of the 2015 general election.

The UK's emergency aid package includes:

£2m of emergency supplies for 75,000, including aid to be dropped to those trapped on Mount Sinjar
The supplies will include reusable filtration containers filled with clean water, solar lights that can also be used to recharge mobile phones, and tents and tarpaulins
£3m of fast-tracked funding for charities and NGOs operating in Iraq
£2.5m of support for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
£500,000 to help coordinate relief efforts

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has advised Britons not to travel to those parts of Iraqi Kurdistan affected by fighting and to leave areas close to the conflict.

Link to Article and Map:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28722664

[Anthea]

BasNews, Washington

United States President Barack Obama has said that it’s important that the international community protects the Iraqi Kurdistan region, because of its reputation for tolerance.

In an interview with the New York Times, Obama said that his government had decided to send air forces into Northern Iraq to attack Islamic State (IS) Militants, after the people of the region were seen to be under the threat of genocide threats.

“The Kurdish region is functional the way we would like to see. It is tolerant of other sects and other religions in a way that we would like to see elsewhere. So we do think it’s important to make sure that that space is protected”, said US leader.

However he also warned Iraqi leaders to get their act together and work closely.

“What I’ve indicated is that I don’t want to be in the business of being the Iraqi air force. I don’t want to get in the business for that matter of being the Kurdish air force, in the absence of a commitment of the people on the ground to get their act together and do what’s necessary politically to start protecting themselves and to push back against ISIS.”

Regarding what made Washington and his administration move and intervene in Northern Iraq, Obama said that the fear of genocide was the main factor.

“When you have a unique circumstance in which genocide is threatened, and a country is willing to have us in there, you have a strong international consensus that these people need to be protected and we have a capacity to do so, then we have an obligation to do so,” said the president.

The president said that what he is telling every faction in Iraq is: “We will be your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We’re not sending a bunch of U.S. troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things. You’re going to have to show us that you are willing and ready to try and maintain a unified Iraqi government that is based on compromise.’

On Friday, the Pentagon gave the green light to intervene in the Mosul and Makhmur area in Northern Iraq and on the border of the Kurdistan to support Kurdish Peshmerga forces and attack IS Militants in those regions.

http://basnews.com/en/News/Details/Obam ... gion/29774

[Anthea]

BBC News

Iraq conflict: Obama vows to stop jihadist state

US President Barack Obama has said he will not allow jihadists to carve out a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq.

On Friday, the US began launching air strikes on fighters of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq.

Mr Obama said there would be further air strikes if necessary but no US military operation on the ground.

The UK has sent a plane to join the relief operation on Mt Sinjar, where thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority are stranded.

A cargo plane left RAF Brize Norton in England carrying humanitarian aid.

Unicef's Juliette Touma says people in the Sinjar mountains are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and protection

The Pentagon earlier said it had carried out a second air drop that included more than 1,500 gallons of water and 28,000 meals.

About 50,000 Yazidis fled into the mountains after IS fighters overran the nearby town of Sinjar a week ago.

"We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse," Yazidi MP Vian Dakhil told the AFP news agency.

Full Article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28723050

[Anthea]

BBC News

Yazidi refugees 'fight for supplies'

2 hours ago

The international community is working on helping tens of thousands of Yazidis - who fled to Mount Sinjar in the face of the IS.

One refugee told the BBC that thousands of displaced people have been fighting over limited aid supplies.

Nick Childs reports.

Link to BBC Video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28727551

[Anthea]

Telegraph

Iraq crisis: 150,000 Yezidi Kurds refugees surrounded by Islamic extremists

Thousands of Yazidi Kurds, including children, have been trapped in the mountains without food and water for days as a major international intervention gets under way

By Jonathan Krohn, in Dohuk, Richard Spencer in Kalak, Steven Swinford and Patrick Sawer
8:21PM BST 09 Aug 2014

Temperatures of up to 122F (50C)

Up to 150,000 desperate refugees were on Saturday still isolated on a barren stretch of mountain in Iraq surrounded by Islamic extremists despite a major international intervention.

There were reports that thousands of Yazidi Kurds, including children, may have already lost their lives after being trapped in the mountains without food and water for days. There were fears the death toll can only rise.

David Cameron spoke by phone to Barack Obama, the US President, in which they agreed that aid drops alone will not be enough and the priority must be to “get these people to safety and avert a genocide”.

Downing Street said that the refugees faced a “desperate choice” between risking dying from a lack of food and water in temperatures of up to 122F (50C) on the mountainside or “descending into the barbaric hands of terrorists”.

Link to view excellent article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... mists.html

[Anthea]

The Independent

Iraq crisis: Obama warns intervention is 'long-term project' as US launches more air strikes

The US has launched a series of air strikes on the militant forces persecuting refugees in Iraq, in what Barack Obama says will be a "long-term project" of military intervention.

Isis fighters have driven tens of thousands of Kurdish-speaking followers of the Yazidi faith into the north-western Sinjar mountain range, in what has been described as "genocide in [both] the literal and legalistic sense".

The UN estimates that at least 56 children have died of dehydration in the mountains, and the US President said America must act now to prevent more deaths, provide humanitarian aid and protect its diplomats.

US Central Command said in a statement that over the course of Saturday four strikes were carried out by its planes and drones, targeting the Isis militants as they fired indiscriminately upon civilians.

Military officials said they destroyed armoured carriers and a truck, in what was the third round of air strikes since they were authorised by the President on Thursday.

Until then the US had not carried out its own official military operations in Iraq since the withdrawal in late 2011.

It returned to battle on Friday when two F/A-18 jets dropped 500lb bombs on Islamic State fighters advancing on the Kurdish capital of Irbil as violence sent the number of displaced Iraqis soaring.

And while Mr Obama admitted the US military cannot bring peace to Iraq, he said the air strikes were "part of a long-term project" that will continue until Iraq can form a government capable of ensuring the security of its borders.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 59621.html

[Anthea]

Rudaw

Kurdistan Leaders: Islamic State a Threat to the World

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants that Peshmerga forces are fighting is a well-armed terrorist state that threatens global security, Kurdish leaders warned.

“The ISIS is a threat to Kurdistan, Iraq and the entire region,” Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani said in a meeting with Fouad Massoum, the newly-elected president of Iraq.

“We are not facing a terrorist organization, but a well-armed terrorist state that is against every human principle,” Barzani warned.

Meanwhile the speaker of Kurdistan’s parliament, Yousif Muhammad, echoed Barzani’s warnings and added that the international community must help the Kurds fight the militants.

“This war isn’t a threat only to the Kurdistan Region, but it is a threat to the security of the whole region and the world,” said Muhammad in a meeting with foreign diplomats in Erbil.

“The ISIS is a new form of violence that knows no boundaries,” he said.

Muhammad applauded the United States, Britain and other countries for their response to the IS threat on the Kurdistan Region, and for delivering humanitarian aid to displaced Kurdish-Yezidis.

Before US air strikes that began Friday to push back an IS advance to Erbil, Kurdish Peshmerga forces were locked in daily battles with the group along a 1,050-kilometer border, losing 150 Peshmerga lives and 500 wounded.

Barham Salih, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said that the Islamic group was at war with all of Iraq’s different religious and ethnic groups. “The ISIS isn’t only fighting the Kurds,” he said.

“We have to assess the situation carefully,” Salih told Rudaw. “Kurdistan is at war with the so-called Islamic State which is a powerful force and should not be underestimated.”

Salih said the American intervention to fight the Islamist militants “meant that the Kurds were not alone and they have American and international backing.”

Salih, who is deputy PUK leader and the former Kurdish prime minister, reassured that the Kurdistan Region will pass successfully through the current crisis.

Kurdish leaders consider US intervention in Iraq “a diplomatic triumph” for the Kurds, noting Baghdad’s failure in trying to persuade US air strikes against IS.

Muhammad said that Baghdad was not pleased with Erbil’s diplomatic success, and that its economic embargo against Kurdistan remains a burden on the autonomous government’s ability to pay civil servants.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/100820141

[Anthea]

Reuters

Exclusive: Iraq says Islamic State killed 500 Yazidis, buried some victims alive

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq's human rights minister told Reuters on Sunday.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Sunni militants had also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

"We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," Sudani said in a telephone interview, in his first remarks to the media on the issue.

Sinjar is the ancient home of the Yazidis, one of the towns captured by the Sunni militants who view the community as "devil worshipers" and tell them to convert to Islam or face death.

A deadline passed at midday on Sunday for 300 Yazidi families to convert to Islam or face death at the hands of the militants. It was not immediately clear whether the Iraqi minister was talking about the fate of those families or others in the conflict.

"Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar," Sudani said.

The minister's comments could pile pressure on the United States - which has carried out air strikes on Islamic State targets in response to the group's latest push through the north - to provide more extensive support.

"In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses," said Sudani. "This is a vicious atrocity."

ANCIENT RELIGION

The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, has prompted tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians to flee for their lives during their push to within a 30-minute drive of the Kurdish regional capital Arbil.

Earlier in their push through northern Iraq, Islamic State, which also considers all Shi'ites heretics who must repent or die, boasted of killing hundreds of captive Shi'ite soldiers after capturing the city of Tikrit on June 12. They put footage on the Internet of their fighters shooting prisoners.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are spread over northern Iraq and are part of the country's Kurdish minority.

Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein's troops tried to crush the Kurds during his iron-fisted rule. Some were taken away by the executed former leader's intelligence agents.

Now they are on the defensive again. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled for their lives after Kurdish fighters abandoned them in the face of Islamic State militants, and are trapped on a mountain near Sinjar at risk of starvation.

"We spoke to some of the Yazidis who fled from Sinjar. We have dozens of accounts and witness testimonies describing painful scenes of how Islamic State fighters arrived and took girls from their families by force to use them as slaves," Sudani said.

"The terrorist Islamic State has also taken at least 300 Yazidi women as slaves and locked some of them inside a police station in Sinjar and transferred others to the town of Tal Afar. We are afraid they will take them outside the country."

"The international community should submit to the fact that the atrocities of the Islamic State will not stop in Iraq and could be repeated somewhere else if no urgent measures were taken to neutralize this terrorist group," Sudani said.

"It’s now the responsibility of the international community to take a firm stand against the Islamic State to reach a consensus on a legitimate decision to start the war on Islamic State to stop genocides and atrocities against civilians."

The militant group, which arrived in northern Iraq in June, has routed Kurds in its latest advance, seizing several towns, a fifth oilfield and Iraq's biggest dam - possibly gaining the ability to flood cities and cut off water and power supplies.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Alison Williams)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... FF20140810

[Londoner]

Gwaer and Maxmoor has been liberated. Mosul hospitals are full of dead and wounded Isis on Peshmerga hands. A largest Peshmerga concentration armed with tanks and heavy artillery on xazr front waiting for the order to cross the river and march on Mosul.

[Anthea]

CNN

Partisan divisions emerge over U.S. mission in Iraq

As the U.S. continues limited, targeted airstrikes for the third day in Iraq, political divisions around the scope of U.S. involvement are emerging in Washington.

Top-ranking Democrats who appeared on political talk shows Sunday advocated for a limited mission and insisted that the Iraqi government must respond to the growing threat of the extreme militant group ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State but formerly was known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Republicans, meanwhile, are advocating a far more aggressive stance, insisting that ISIS poses a direct threat to the U.S. They urged President Barack Obama to do more than the limited airstrikes he announced Friday.

ISIS, which obtained sustained power in parts of Syria, has expanded its deadly grip on parts of Iraq, especially the Kurdish north, where tens of thousands of Yazidi minorities had been forced into mountains, where they're stranded without food and water. Up to 60 children are among those who have died from the extreme conditions.

The militant group executes civilians who don't adhere to its version of Sunni Islam. Its goal is to create an Islamic caliphate, which it claims it has already done, calling the regions they control in Iraq and Syria the Islamic State.

Obama announced airstrikes to protect the hundreds of Americans working in the region and said humanitarian assistance to Kurdish minorities would be part of a limited mission that he described as a "long-term project."

But in Washington, Republicans harshly criticized the President and his mission, saying it is too little, too late.

The U.S. role

"ISIS continues to make gains everywhere," Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Obama's approach to protect military and diplomatic personnel in the area, McCain said, is "narrow" in scope and "clearly very, very ineffective, to say the least."

"That's not a strategy," he said, calling for additional airstrikes in Iraq and Syria to dismantle ISIS and to provide additional military equipment to the Kurds and the Syrian fighters who oppose ISIS.

That sentiment for an expanded involvement was echoed by Rep. Peter King, R-New York.

"I am saying we should do whatever we have to do," the House Homeland Security Committee member said on NBC's "Meet the Press," including, "we take nothing off the table."

On Sunday, Democrats, however, expressed support for the President's targeted airstrikes and cautioned against any broader involvement.

"Escalating it is not on the cards," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said on "Meet the Press." "We cannot send the troops. We must not send the troops."

But King insisted his support for a broader operation, which includes "massive aircraft," does not involve U.S. combat troops back into the country after nearly a decade of war and three years after the troops left. "Let's not set up the false argument that there have to be troops on the ground," he said.

The role of Iraqis

Democrats said Sunday that the U.S. can do little beyond provide humanitarian assistance and protect American personnel. They said it is ultimately up to Iraqis to address the crisis engulfing their country.

"Only Iraq can save Iraq," Durbin said. "If Iraqis come together, al-Maliki put in power someone in power with the Shias and Kurds, perhaps they can do it themselves."

The U.S. relationship with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has deteriorated. He has been blamed for escalating tensions between religious and ethnic sects within Iraq between the Shia majority, the Sunni minority, the Kurds and smaller groups of minorities, causing the destabilization of the country. The Iraqi Parliament is expected to choose a new prime minister soon, and Democrats say that the new leader should unite the shattered country.

Democrats say that political reconciliation in Baghdad would be able to address the crisis, which Sen. Ben Cardin, D- Maryland, called a "civil war."

"The real cause is that the Iraqi government has not performed the way it should to protect the rights of all Iraqis," Cardin said on "Fox news Sunday."

Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that the U.S. is not responsible for repairing a country fraught with political divisions. "This has to be a political strategy that takes place in Baghdad and not in Washington," he said on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

But King lambasted the Democrats, saying they are providing a limited view of Iraq and the threat of ISIS. He insisted that the problem is much deeper than intra-Iraq turmoil.

Threat to the U.S.

He called the Democrats' position, which is similar to the one Obama expressed this past week, a "shameful abdication of American leadership."

King said ISIS is a threat beyond Iraq and Syria, calling the group more powerful than al Qaeda was on September 11, 2001, when the U.S. was attacked.

"I want to hear what he says when they attack us in the United States," King said of ISIS.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, offered a similar, dire sentiment of the threat from the militant group shunned by al Qaeda because of its extreme, violent tactics.

"I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorist ability to operate in Syria and Iraq," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "Whatever you want to call these guys, they are coming here."

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/10/polit ... irstrikes/

[Anthea]

Wall Street Journal

U.S. Officials Say Airstrikes in Iraq Having Effect on Islamic State Offensive

WASHINGTON—U.S. warplanes conducted a third day of airstrikes in Iraq on Sunday, targeting vehicles and weapons being used by Islamic extremists, and American officials said the strikes have provided relief for a besieged religious minority and apparently have slowed a militant advance toward the city of Erbil.

Since the air campaign began on Friday, the U.S. military has carried out a dozen strikes on Islamic State targets. American jet fighters and armed drones have hit convoys, artillery units, mortar positions and armored vehicles operated by the group calling itself the Islamic State.

The strikes appear to have helped loosen the Islamic State grip around Mount Sinjar, where the Yazidi religious minority has been trapped for days, and blunted the Sunni militant offensive in and around Erbil, U.S. officials said Sunday.

So far, the primary focus of the strikes has been on Islamic State forces closing in on the Kurdish capital, where the region's Peshmerga fighters have been struggling to turn back the Sunni militant offensive.

While it remains unclear how much of an impact the first days of the U.S. air campaign are having on the Islamic State strategy, early indications are that the strikes have had an impact on the militant group's ambitions, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

"ISIS is starting to realize there are consequences to using heavy artillery and equipment near Erbil," said one senior U.S. defense official. "It's going to slow them down and give the Pesh time to fortify lines with supplies they're getting from [the Iraqi military] and from the U.S."

The Kurdish government has made repeated appeals for more military firepower to repel the Islamic State advances. American officials are working closely with the Iraqi government to get more ammunition and weapons to Kurdistan. With approval from Baghdad, American defense officials said Sunday, the U.S. military will directly supply Kurdish forces with ammunition and small arms.

Taken together, U.S. officials said, the American effort should deter Islamic State advances on Erbil.

"I cannot imagine that we are not having a tactical effect right now," said one senior U.S. military official. "When they see that any of their advances on Erbil are going to be met with rapid and swift airstrikes, they are probably going to move elsewhere."

Sunday's airstrikes began at approximately 2:15 a.m. EDT with an attack on an armed truck that was firing at Kurdish forces on a road leading to Erbil.

U.S. planes struck and destroyed four more ISIS armed vehicles in the next few hours, with the last strike of the set coming at 7:25 a.m. EDT, said officials with the U.S. military's Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-offi ... 63652.html