Any day we’re demolishing ISIS targets is a good day. Any day they’re allowed to advance is a bad one.
Via Fox News:
The Obama administration is considering a humanitarian mission to help a group of religious minorities under siege by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News, in what would be the second such relief operation since U.S. military flights began earlier this month.
The potential relief operation would be meant to aid Shiite Turkmen in northern Iraq who have been cut off from the outside world in what is becoming an increasingly desperate situation. The United Nations warned over the weekend of a possible “massacre.”
The mission, if it went forward, would follow an earlier effort to help displaced Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. U.S. cargo planes dropped tons of food and water to help them, while U.S. jets launched airstrikes on nearby Islamic State fighting positions.
Since that operation, the U.S. military has continued to strike Islamic State targets in support of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, including during a sustained campaign to recapture the critical Mosul Dam.
But as part of the next potential humanitarian campaign, first reported by the Associated Press, the administration is now focused on the imperiled town of Amirli, which is situated about 105 miles north of Baghdad and just a few miles from Kurdish territory. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people are estimated to have no access to food or water.
The head of the United Nation’s assistance mission in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, earlier this week called for urgent action in Amirli and described the situation as desperate.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren would not comment when asked Wednesday about the Amirli situation.