Thank you, Prime Minister Abbott. It is absolutely disgraceful the United States isn’t doing this.
Australian PM Tony Abbott offers sanctuary to 4000 Iraqi, Syrian Christians and persecuted minorities,” AFP, August 14, 2014 (thanks to Kenneth)
THE Abbott Government has announced that up to 4000 Iraqi and Syrian Christians and members of other minorities fleeing Islamic State terrorists would be offered sanctuary in Australia.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has also not ruled out sending Australian Diggers back into the war zone, saying the “murderous hordes of ISIL, now the Islamic State, are on the march” and threatening genocide on Iraqis.
Mr Abbott’s announcement came as the United States weighed up plans to put troops back on the ground in Iraq following a UN warning that the mass genocide of Yazidi refugees at the hands of IS fighters could be “only hours away”.
UN minority rights expert Rita Izsak warned the 20,000-30,000 trapped people, many of them members of the Yazidi minority, “faced a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours”.