Updated 11.02pm
US PRESIDENT BARACK Obama is considering ordering air strikes against Sunni extremists in northern Iraq, according to reports this evening.
The military assault would be paired with humanitarian food drops to beleaguered civilians, the reports said.
American media, citing senior White House officials, said Obama was weighing military options after jihadists from the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) attacked Christian and Yazidi minority communities.
“There could be a humanitarian catastrophe there,” an official told the New York Times, warning that a decision on military action was expected “imminently – this could be a fast-moving train.”
Other press reports said that Obama could decide to mount a humanitarian operation to save displaced or besieged civilians, or launch military strikes to halt the ISIS advance.
The Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby dismissed reports tonight that the airstrikes had already begun.
Obama came to office determined to end US military involvement in Iraq and in his first term oversaw the withdrawal of the huge ground force deployed there since the 2003 American invasion.
But recent rapid gains by the Islamic State, a successor group to Al-Qaeda’s former Iraqi and Syrian operations, compelled him to send military advisors back to Baghdad evaluate the situation.
The United Nations Security Council was to hold emergency talks on the crisis later today, and France has pledged support for forces “engaged in battle” against the ISIS radicals.
The group, along with allied Sunni factions, is at war with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s mainly Shiite government forces and with the peshmerga forces of the Kurdish autonomous region of the country.
In late June it proclaimed a “caliphate” straddling rebel-held areas of Syria and Iraq and seized the major city of Mosul. In recent days it has seized towns formerly populated by Christians and Yazidis.
Iraqi religious leaders say Islamic State militants have forced 100,000 Christians to flee and have occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts.
Meanwhile, several thousand Yazidis, members of an ancient pre-Muslim religious minority, are stranded on high ground after being driven out of their home town of Sinjar by ISIS fighters.
Originally published 7.05pm
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