US Marines and special operations forces on Wednesday landed on a remote mountain in northern Iraq where thousands of Yazidi refugees have been trapped for days by murderous Sunni militants.
The 130 Marines and special forces operatives were joined by a disaster assistance relief team from the US Agency for International Development, ABC News reported.
They came to assess the crisis in the Sinjar mountains and come up with a plan to save the Yazidis, hundreds of whom have already been slaughtered by Islamic State jihadis.
“There needs to be a lasting solution that gets that population to a safe space where they can receive more permanent assistance,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing.
“We’ll look at what the best way and the safest way is to get those people off the mountain,” said Rhodes, adding that more US troops on the ground is one of the options Obama is considering.
The US had dropped more than 100,000 meals and water to the refugees, but those efforts did not address the larger crisis, Rhodes said.
Meanwhile, several US allies ramped up their efforts to bolster Kurdish forces in Erbil and help the desperate refugees, some of whom are paying smugglers to spirit them to safety.
French President François Hollande, calling the Yazidis’ plight a “catastrophic situation,” vowed to send arms to Kurdish peshmerga forces battling the militants.
“In order to respond to the urgent needs expressed by the Kurdistan regional authorities, the president has decided, in agreement with Baghdad, to deliver arms in the coming hours,” Hollande’s office said.
And Britain will also assist in the international rescue mission, said Prime Minister David Cameron.
Canada and Australia have also offered to assist the humanitarian effort.
The UN called a “Level 3 Emergency” — its highest level — to trigger additional aid.
Even Pope Francis weighed in on the crisis, with the Vatican on Wednesday releasing a letter Francis sent to the UN secretary-general urging the international community “to take action to end the humanitarian tragedy now under way” in Iraq.
“The violent attacks that are sweeping across northern Iraq cannot but awaken the consciences of all men and women of goodwill to concrete acts of solidarity,” Francis wrote.
The Vatican’s UN ambassador went even further.
“Military action might be necessary,” declared Silvano Tomasi, according to Agence France-Presse.
Some desperate Yazidis have paid criminal gangs to get them to safety.
One mother told how she paid a smuggler to take her and three young children to a village on Iraqi Kurdistan’s border with Turkey, the (UK) Express newspaper reported.
They waded across the Tigris River, stepped carefully through a minefield and climbed over a barbed-wire fence.
“We were afraid of dying at the hands of the Islamic State,” said the 43-year-old mom, identified only as Amal.