WILAYAH NEWS VOICE OF THE GLOBAL AWAKENING
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Iraqi forces on Sunday broke through to the town of Amerli, which was besieged by ISIS, where thousands of people have been trapped for over two months with dwindling food and water.
“Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege,” security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta told AFP.
Iraqi security forces, thousands of militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga fighters took part in a major operation on Sunday to lift the jihadist blockade of Amerli, sources said.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah warned that the West would be the next Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) target unless swift action is taken, after Britain raised its terror alert level over the threat of jihadist attacks.
The drive to break the more than two-month siege of Amerli, north of Baghdad, came as an NGO said that the ISIS jihadist group, which has surrounded the Turkmen-majority town, sold at least 27 women in Syria after kidnapping them in Iraq.
The town has been besieged since ISIS-led militants launched a major offensive in Iraq in June.
Amerli residents face major shortages of food and water, and are in danger both because of their faith, which jihadists consider heresy, and their resistance to the militants, which has drawn harsh retribution elsewhere.
Western warplanes dropped desperately needed aid on Sunday to Amerli town.
The residents of the Salaheddin province town of Amerli, where the United Nations has warned of the risk of sectarian massacre by the besieging extremists, have been running desperately short of food and medicines.
Australian, British, French and US aircraft dropped relief supplies to the thousands of civilians trapped in the enclave.
“At the request of the government of Iraq, the United States military today airdropped humanitarian aid to the town of Amerli,” said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.
“The United States Air Force delivered this aid alongside aircraft from Australia, France and the United Kingdom, who also dropped much needed supplies.”
The aid drops came alongside “coordinated air strikes against nearby ISIS terrorists in order to support this humanitarian assistance operation,” he added.
Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir al-Zaidi said the anti-jihadist operation had been launched with Iraqi air support, and vowed that “we will be victorious over them.”
The operation has retaken 10 villages en route to Amerli, and reinforcements have been airlifted to the town, officials said.
Meanwhile the US military launched fresh attacks on ISIS forces, using fighter aircraft and drones to carry out strikes near Iraq’s strategic Mosul dam, the Pentagon said.
The United States began carrying out air strikes against ISIS in Iraq earlier this month, but has yet to decide if it will expand that military action into the Amerli area, or to Syria.
Writing in the New York Times, Kerry urged “a united response led by the United States and the broadest possible coalition of nations” to combat ISIS.
“What’s needed to confront its nihilistic vision and genocidal agenda is a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force,” he said.
Kerry said he and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel would meet European counterparts on the sidelines of an upcoming NATO summit to enlist assistance, and then travel to the Middle East to build support “among the countries that are most directly threatened.”
US President Barack Obama has acknowledged that Washington has no strategy yet to tackle ISIS, which has declared an Islamic “caliphate” in large swathes of territory under its control in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS has prompted widespread concern because of its sweeping advances in both countries and the killing of hundreds of people, including in gruesome beheadings and mass executions.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 1.6 million Iraqis have been displaced this year, with more than 850,000 leaving their homes this month alone.
The group’s progress has also sparked regional fears, with Saudi King Abdullah warning Saturday that “they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month” if left unchecked.
Britain on Friday raised its terror alert level to “severe”, meaning an attack is “highly likely”, although Washington said it had no plans to follow suit.
The threat from ISIS is just the latest fallout from Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011 as a peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad but descended into civil war after his regime responded with a brutal crackdown.
On Wednesday, fighters from another jihadist group in Syria, al-Nusra Front, seized the Syrian side of the Quneitra border crossing on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
They took hostage 44 Fijian UN peacekeepers and surrounded UN peacekeepers from the Philippines.
All 75 Filipino troops serving in the Golan Heights are now safe after the last batch slipped away under cover of night from the besieging Syrian rebels, a Philippine military spokesman said Sunday.
Forty of the soldiers engaged the Syrian rebels in a “seven-hour firefight”, but later walked to safety to a UN position just over two kilometres away, he added.
Source: Al Akhbar