Yazidis are once again trapped atop Mount Sinjar by ISIS Muslims and are begging for our help. In fact they don’t understand why we are bombing Kobani and not also fighting for them:
REUTERS – Islamic State militants advanced on Iraq’s Sinjar mountain on Tuesday, tightening a siege of thousands of stranded Yazidis, who called on the United States and its allies to act to avert more bloodshed.
The attack is the latest threat to minority Yazidis, thousands of whom have shot, buried alive or sold into slavery by IS militants, who regard them as devil-worshippers.
The IS militants originally attacked the area around Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, in August. A renewed assault began at dawn on Monday, when militants driving Humvees and civilian vehicles attacked several Yazidi residential compounds, forcing the Yazidi to retreat up the mountain.
“We are outnumbered and outgunned. We don’t know how long we can hold them off,” said Ali Qasem, a Yazidi volunteer on the mountain.
Qasem said most families had already fled by the time IS arrived, but some could not leave and remained trapped in residential complexes to the east of the mountain.
U.S. President Barack Obama authorized air strikes in Iraq in August, citing the duty to prevent an impending genocide of Yazidis at the hands of IS militants after they overran a vast swathe of northern Iraq.
The air strikes helped Kurdish forces turn the tide against IS in the north and relieved some of the pressure on Sinjar so that a corridor could be opened to evacuate thousands of Yazidis from the mountain.
However, the mountain is still under threat, and the air strikes have not prevented IS from gaining ground elsewhere in Iraq as well as neighbouring Syria, where they have been attacking the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab.
A Yazidi parliamentarian questioned why U.S. planes were striking IS positions in Kobani but not Sinjar. He said the militants sought to control the mountain to gain a strategic refuge near the border with Syria.
“Unfortunately, coalition planes are in the sky and can see the tanks, but they are not striking them,” said Yazidi parliamentarian Mahama Khalil, also on the mountain. “Why do they defend Kobani and not Sinjar?”