Obama Authorizes Air Strikes, Humanitarian Aid Mission in Iraq

President Obama said Thursday he has authorized “targeted” air strikes if necessary to protect American interests in Iraq from insurgent forces that are taking over the country’s northern cities.

Obama

If the terrorist group ISIS reaches Erbil, the president said he will call in U.S. air strikes. The U.S. has an embassy and other staffers in the city. Air strikes have also been authorized to protect families fleeing ISIS in the Sinjar Mountains.

An air drop of food, water and medicine made at the request of the Iraqi government has been completed, the president said in the statement from the White House.

U.S. aircraft, escorted by fighter jets, dropped 5,300 gallons of fresh drinking water and 8,000 meals ready to eat.

The emergency effort is being deployed to help a group of 40,000 Yazidis, a group of ethnic Kurds, who fled villages in northern Iraq under threat from ISIS.

The Yazidis fled to the Sinjar Mountains, in a remote part of northern Iraq near the border of Syria, where they are stuck without food or water while ISIS forces are gathered at the base of the mountains.

 

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