Kerry: Isis Campaign Shows 'Signs Of Genocide'

John Kerry says the Islamist group's "campaign of terror shows all the warning signs of genocide".

1:08pm UK, Friday 08 August 2014

Video: Obama Approves Iraq Airstrikes

John Kerry has said a campaign by Islamist militants advancing in Iraq "shows all the warning signs of genocide".

The US secretary of state was speaking hours after President Barack Obama authorised airstrikes against the militants in northern Iraq and ordered airdrops of supplies to besieged religious minorities.

Three aircraft delivered food and water to thousands of Iraqis trapped on a mountain, and left the drop zone after 15 minutes, according to the Pentagon.

In a late-night televised address, Mr Obama said targeted strikes would be launched - if needed - to stop the advance on Irbil by the Islamic State - the group previously known as ISIS or ISIL.

Pic: ANF TV — Thousands of Yezidis who fled their homes risk starvation

The President said the action would be aimed at defending Americans and protect civilians under siege, preventing a "potential act of genocide".

"Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, 'There is no one coming to help,'" said Mr Obama.

"Well, today America is coming to help."

However, he stressed there was no intention of sending in any troops.

Prime Minister David Cameron called the attacks by IS "barbaric" and said he was "extremely concerned by the appalling situation in Iraq and the desperate situation facing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis".

However, Downing Street said there would be no UK military action in Iraq.

Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjarl west of Mosul, take refuge at Dohuk province — Some Yedizis took refuge in Dohuk province in northern Iraq

Some 40,000 residents from the ancient Yezidi community have been forced to leave the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar after the Sunni fighters overwhelmed Kurdish forces.

Many Yezidis are trapped on Mount Sinjar without food or water and are at risk of starvation as the militants surround the base.

"Children are dying of thirst, meanwhile ISIL forces have called for the destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide," Mr Obama said.

"These innocent families are faced with a horrible choice: Descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger."

President Barack Obama Meets National Security Team On Iraq — Obama in discussion with his national security team

Two F-18 fighter jets kept watch over the three cargo aircraft - one C-17 and two C-130s - during the Mount Sinjar aid mission.

The planes dropped 72 bundles, containing more than 20,000 litres of drinking water and 8,000 pre-packaged meals.

Militants have been surging across the north of Iraq towards Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region.

The US has a consulate in the city, where civilian and military staff work.

Mr Obama said airstrikes would target IS convoys "should they move toward the city".

Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjarl west of Mosul, arrive at Dohuk province — ISIS issued an ultimatum toYezidis to convert to Islam

The announcement was Mr Obama's most significant response yet to the crisis. The President had been reluctant to deepen US military re-engagement in Iraq after the last troops left in 2011.

But he said the strikes had been approved to help Iraqi forces and stop a "massacre" of the Yezidis.

IS has issued the Yezidi people an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious fine, flee their homes or face death.

The group sees the Yezidis, who are followers of a religion derived from Zoroastrianism, as "devil worshippers".

Attacks on minorities in Iraq could constitute a crime against humanity, said the UN Security Council at an emergency meeting on Thursday.

ISIS fghters in the northern Iraq city of Mosul — Militants have been surging across the north of Iraq towards Irbil

Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Christians, are fleeing from the jihadists who have swept through more than a dozen towns in recent days.

Among them, the militants captured Iraq's biggest Christian town, Qaraqosh, prompting many residents to leave, fearing for their lives.

The group has declared a caliphate - an Islamic state - across much of Iraq and Syria and wants to bring in a strict version of Islamic law.

Video: Iraq Airstrikes To Stop 'Genocide'

The US President says he authorised air strikes and relief supply drops in Iraq to prevent "genocide" by Islamist extremists against minorities.
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Gallery: ISIS Insurgency In Iraq
- Iraqi security forces and volunteers take part in a mission to secure an area from militants of the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as ISIS or ISIL, in Udhaim district, north of Baghdad
  
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- Iraqi forces said they were fully in control of a district, northeast of Baghdad, after repelling repeated attacks by insurgents of the Islamic State to capture the area and continue their push towards the capital
  
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- Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence, walk on the outskirts of Sinjar
  
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- An Iraqi Yazidi woman who fled the violence cries as she stands among others at a school where they are taking shelter in the Kurdish city of Dohuk
  
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- The Yazidis are a small community that follows a 4,000-year-old faith and have been repeatedly targeted by jihadists who call them "devil-worshipers" because of their unique beliefs and practices
  
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- Tens of thousands fled the assault on Sinjar and are now surrounded, according to witnesses and the United Nations, after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces who had held towns in the area for years
  
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- Residents look at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad
  
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- Iraqi security forces and volunteers take part in a mission to secure an area from IS insurgents, who seized swathes of territory in Syria before moving across the border into Iraq
  
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- A general view of damaged houses in the city of Ramadi
  
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- Kurdish "peshmerga" troops prepare to fire a mortar during an intensive security deployment against IS militants on the outskirts of the province of Nineveh
  
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- IS militants extended their gains in northern Iraq, seizing three more towns and gaining a foothold near the Kurdish region (Kurdish "peshmerga" troops pictured)
  
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- The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria it controls, clashed with Kurdish forces in the town of Makhmur near Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous zone
  
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- Islamic State militants stand guard after controlling a checkpoint in Khazer at the border area of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region
  
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- Iraqi Turkman Shi'ite children displaced from the northern Iraqi area of Tal Afar take shelter in a school in Sadr City, one of Baghdad's northern Shi'ite-majority districts
  
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- Members from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society set up over 300 tents for displaced Iraqis
  
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- People look at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's Sadr City
  
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- A member of the Iraqi security forces
  
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- Iraqis inspect the scene of a car bomb explosion outside the Shi'ite Mustafa prayer hall, or Husseiniya, in the southwest of the northern Kurdish controlled Iraqi city of Kirkuk
  
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- Iraqi security forces
  
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- Iraqi security forces
  
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- A member of the Iraqi security forces
  
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- Iraqi security forces
  
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- People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in the city of Kirkuk
  
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Article: Airstrikes: 'US Is Coming To Help'

ISIS Strikes 'A Hallmark Of American Leadership'

Updated: 7:10am UK, Friday 08 August 2014

By Tim Gallagher, Washington DC Bureau Chief

The White House has a mantra: There is no US military solution to Iraq's problem.

Indeed, any US military mission against the murderous Islamic State - previously known as ISIS or ISIL - was unthinkable to the White House earlier in the summer when the insurgents began their bloody crusade through northern Iraq.

But now Barack Obama has ordered US military aircraft to engage in airstrikes inside northern Iraq.

So what has changed?

For one thing, the scale of the crisis facing tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians, Yazidis and Shias is now an undeniable humanitarian catastrophe.

And there's some form here. The justification for US involvement in Libya in 2011 was painted in similar terms by Obama.

"We knew that if we waited … Benghazi … could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," he said.

At the time of the Libya conflict, the White House described America's role as "Leading from Behind". That doctrine has now been eclipsed, the President describing his attack on IS as a "hallmark of American leadership".

Then there's the man himself. The Obama on display earlier spoke with purpose and steel. The professorial President we saw a year ago agonising over whether to get involved in Syria is no more. In his place, a Commander-in-Chief with a clear promise. "America is coming to help," he said.

Obama justified the action in Iraq because American diplomatic interests at the US Consulate in Irbil were threatened by the IS advance. The administration was badly scarred by the attacks on a diplomatic posting in Benghazi in 2012, in which ambassador Chris Stevens lost his life. It is not a mistake that they will make twice.

America is a war-weary nation. It has paid a heavy price for two long and costly engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and there is no public appetite for getting involved again in Iraq. Indeed, Obama was keen to reiterate the line that there will be no American boots on the ground this time.

This is a President who wants to be remembered for ending two wars, not starting new ones.

But in the space of a few days, we have seen the US military back in action over the skies of Iraq and a US General gunned down in Afghanistan. For a Commander-in-Chief trying to craft a legacy, it's a stark reminder that the shadows of the past may well endure long after he has left the spotlight.

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Article: ISIS Leader Jihad's 'Rising Star'
ISIS Leader Is Jihad's 'Rising Star'

Updated: 8:49am UK, Thursday 12 June 2014

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, commander of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) controls large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq.

But despite his power - and a $10m (£5.9m) US reward for information leading to his capture - little is known about a man who for his own survival has shunned the spotlight.

Fighters from ISIS and its rivals have praised Baghdadi as a strategist driven by an unbending determination to fight for and establish a hardline Islamic state.

He has succeeded in exploiting turmoil in Syria and Iraq's weak central authority after the US military withdrawal to carve out his powerbase.

He has also proved ruthless in eliminating opponents to further his ambition of creating an Islamist state.

According to the US reward notice, which depicts a round-faced, brown-eyed man with closely cropped beard and short dark hair, Baghdadi was born in the Iraqi town of Samarra in 1971.

He is said to be the only prominent al Qaeda leader not to pledge allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri after Osama bin Laden's death three years ago.

He split with Zawahri after falling out with al Qaeda's Nusra Front in Syria, whose leader Abu Mohammad al Golani rejected an edict to merge his forces under Baghdadi's command.

While Baghdadi's supporters believe an Islamic state would revive the glories of Islam, they say Zawahiri feared that by drawing jihadi fighters together in one place it would make it easier for the West to defeat them.

His fighters counter that Baghdadi has plenty of hidden surprises for his enemies.

"He has capabilities that he keeps secret until the right time," one ISIS supporter said.

Ignoring Zawahiri's calls to leave Syria to the Nusra Front, Baghdadi expanded operations across northern and eastern Syria in 2012 and 2013, sometimes battling Bashar al Assad's forces but more often pushing out other rebel fighters.

Baghdadi's fighters now control the city of Raqqa - Syria's only provincial capital completely beyond Assad's control - and have imposed strict Islamic law.

In neighbouring Deir al-Zor province ISIS has waged a six-week offensive against rival rebels in which 600 fighters have been killed, seizing oilfields and towns on the northeast bank of the Euphrates, 60 miles (100 km) from the Iraqi border.

There is also video evidence of ISIS in the Syrian town of Azaz, with territory they controlled marked by graffiti on the walls and a flying flag.

Video also appeared on a social media website in January purported to show the northern Syrian town of Manbij after it was captured from rival insurgents by fighters from ISIS.
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Video: UK's UN Ambassador's Iraq Fears

Sir Mark Lyall Grant discusses the UN's fears over the worsening situation in Iraq.
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Video: What Is A Caliphate?

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