The first signs emerged yesterday of an international military coalition to combat Islamic State extremists and avert genocide in northern Iraq.
France joined the United States in supplying weapons to Kurdish forces, Barack Obama is considering US military options and is expected to make a decision in days, and the British prime minister David Cameron said an international plan was under way to rescue thousands of refugees trapped on a mountain.
“I can confirm that detailed plans are now being put in place,” Mr Cameron said.
He gave no details but said Britain would play a role, just as it had worked with the US in flying in humanitarian aid to thousands of Yazidis and other minorities who have taken refuge on Mount Sinjar.
The US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said it was unsustainable to let the refugees remain on the mountain. “There needs to be a lasting solution that gets that population to a safe space where they can receive more permanent assistance,” he said.
The Pentagon sent 129 troops to Iraq on Tuesday to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis and the options for moving the refugees safely off the mountain. Mr Rhodes said the US president was expected to receive their final recommendations quickly and make a decision within days.
Until France’s intervention yesterday the US was the only country to have openly stated it was delivering weapons to the Kurdish regional government, although US officials have said other countries in the region are also delivering arms.
The US has also struck Islamic State positions from the air in attacks that Mr Obama authorised last Thursday to stop the advance of the extremists, who have seized control of large parts of Iraq since June, and to protect US interests. However, he had ruled out sending combat troops back into Iraq.
Kurdish troops, bolstered by US airstrikes, were battling the militants yesterday near the town of Sinjar, whose capture last week forced thousands from minority comunities to flee to Mount Sinjar.
The Islamic State fighters view members of the Yazidi sect as devil-worshippers, and have already killed hundreds of them. “All possible measures must be taken urgently to avoid a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours,” said UN monitor Rita Izsak.
The European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers for Friday after calls by the French and Italian governments for talks on Iraq.
The ministers may put together a European package, with Germany focusing on delivering humanitarian and non-lethal supplies and other countries supplying weapons, said Karl Lamers, the deputy chairman of the defence committee in Germany’s lower house of parliament.
Others in Germany want to go further and break with the country’s strict arms-export policies. That would allow consideration of providing Iraq with “lethal means” should Kurdish troops fail to stop mass killings among religious minorities, said Henning Otte, a parliamentary defence policy spokesman.
“We’re witnessing genocide against Yazidis and Christians by the Islamic State extremists,” Mr Otte said. “We in Germany – especially we Germans – can’t just look away and rule out aid options pre-emptively.”
In Iraqi Kurdistan, scores of young men and children held a protest yesterday to demand more aid at a camp sheltering thousands of desperate Yazidis who fled the militant onslaught on Sinjar. “We have no bread, and very little water. We need help. We want to get out of here. We are so desperate we want to leave Iraq,” said Nasser, a 30-year-old protester at the Bajid Kandala camp.
“There is no UN here, no human rights groups. We have very little food. The lucky ones get a meal a day. Many others go hungry,” said Khodhr Hussein, 44.“Many people are sleeping in the sun, the camp is not big enough for everybody.”
Saadullah Abdullah Hamid, a Kurdish official running the camp, said the local authorities had a partnership with the United Nations’ refugee agency. He said Bajid Kandala served as a transit camp and every day families were moved to other camps elsewhere in the north.
* Reporting by Bloomberg News, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse