UK sends humanitarian aid to help refugees fleeing advance of Islamic State, the Telegraph understands, as US President says air strikes will continue if necessary
13.28 The Telegraph's Patrick Sawer has further information about the British humanitarian aid going to Iraq:
A consignment of British aid is being flown by C130 transporter plane to the region after leaving RAF Brize Norton on Saturday morning.
A consignment of British aid is being flown by C130 transporter plane to the region after leaving RAF Brize Norton on Saturday morning.
The trip will involve a 14 hour journey. After a brief pause in Cyprus the plane will make its way across Iraq and over Mount Sinjar, where the RAF crew deliver bundles of aid from the air.
Supplies, part of the UK’s £8 million emergency package, will include drinking water and tents, as well as reusable filtration containers, tents, and solar lights which can also recharge mobile phones.
The British C130 will be escorted over Iraq by US fighter planes to protect it against attempts by jihadists armed with surface to air missiles to shoot it down.
13.11 Turkey's defense minister has ruled out a Turkish military intervention against Islamic State fighters in Iraq, and said his country was not involved in US airstrikes against the extremists near the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil.
Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz told reporters in the central Anatolian province of Sivas that his country had not provided "any support to the US so far, according to AP.
13.00 Oil production from Iraqi Kurdistan remains unaffected despite an incursion by Islamic State militants along the autonomous region's border, its Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement on Saturday, reported Reuters.
"Oil production in the region remains unaffected, and is being delivered to both the domestic and export markets," the statement said.
12.01 An engineer at Mosul dam has told Reuters that Islamic State fighters have brought in engineers to repair an emergency power line to the city, Iraq's biggest in the north, that had been cut off four days ago, causing power outages and water shortages.
"They are gathering people to work at the dam," he said.
11.52 The Telegraph understands that the UK government's emergency Cobra committee will meet at 3pm today, chaired by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to assess the crisis.
11.35 Here is the video:
11.28 In his weekly address, President Obama on Saturday vowed to continue air strikes against Iraqi jihadists if needed to protect US diplomats and military advisors.
Mr Obama said that he had authorized the strikes in Iraq to protect US personnel serving in the northern city of Arbil. "And, if necessary, that's what we will continue to do," he said.
Mr Obama emphasised that the United States "cannot and should not intervene every time there's a crisis in the world".
But when there's a situation like the one on this mountain - when countless innocent people are facing a massacre, and when we have the ability to help prevent it - the United States can't just look away. That's not who we are. We're Americans. We act. We lead. And that's what we're going to do on that mountain.
11.22 The cargo plane's humanitarian supplies include reusable filtration containers filled with clean water, tents and tarpaulins to provide basic shelter, and solar lights that can also recharge mobile phones. The supplies are part of an £8m package of humanitarian aid announced by International Development Secretary Justine Greening yesterday.
11:03
10.41 A Yazidi MP has said there are 'one or two days' left to save Iraq's stranded Yazidis.
"We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse," Vian Dakhil told AFP.
"If we cannot give them hope now - the (Kurdish) peshmerga, the United Nations, the government, anybody - their morale will collapse completely and they will die," she warned.
Thousands of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority, fled their homes a week ago when militants attacked the town of Sinjar.
Many of them have since been stranded in the nearby mountain range, with no food and water in searing temperatures.
The Yazidis, dubbed "devil worshippers" by IS militants because of their unorthodox blend of beliefs and practices, are a small and closed community, one of Iraq's most vulnerable minorities.
10.30 A top official in the autonomous region of Kurdistan said the time had come for a fightback, according to AFP.
"Following the US strikes, the peshmerga will first regroup, second redeploy in areas they retreated from and third help the displaced return to their homes," Fuad Hussein told reporters Friday in the Kurdish capital Arbil.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who has boycotted cabinet meetings for weeks as relations soured with Baghdad, said that failing to arm the Kurdish peshmerga forces had been a costly mistake.
He said the American air strikes had stopped the rot on the ground and allowed the federal and Kurdish authorities to unite behind the common cause of defeating the IS jihadists.
"The Iraqi army and the peshmerga are fighting side-by-side in the same trenches now," he said.
Iraqi Yezidi people flee Sinjar town of Mosul to Silopi district of Turkey's Sirnak city
Kurdish peshmerga forces stand guard against the Islamic State threat in the Yezidis' most holy site in Lalish, north of Erbil, on August 8
09.30 More detail on the second airdrop of food and water early Saturday for those trapped in the Sinjar mountains from AP:
American planes conducted a second airdrop of food and water early Saturday for those trapped in the Sinjar mountains, said Pentagon chief spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby. Escorted by two Navy fighter jets, three planes dropped 72 bundles of supplies for the refugees, including more than 28,000 meals and more than 1,500 gallons of water, said Kirby, who spoke from New Delhi during a trip with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Refugees sheltering on Mount Sinjar in the desert west of Mosul said thefirst American air drops failed to bring relief. The supplies had been dropped from too high and the life saving water containers had burst on impact.
08.55 Australia may participate in United States airdrops of food and water to civilians threatened by jihadist violence in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday, according to AFP.
"We are talking to the Americans about possible Australian participation in these humanitarian airdrops," Abbott told reporters in Sydney.
"Australia does have some transport assets in the Middle East," he added, saying two C-130 aircraft in the United Arab Emirates could be used.
But he said there had so far been no discussion about Australia becoming involved in the air strikes which the US has authorised.
08.20 President Obama said he was willing to consider broader use of military strikes in Iraq to beat back Islamist militants, but Iraqi political leaders must first figure out a way to work with each other, the New York Times reported.
In an interview with Thomas Friedman, Obama also expressed regrets over not doing more to help Libya, pessimism about prospects for Middle East peace, concerns that Russia could invade Ukraine, and frustration that fellow economic superpower China has not stepped up to help.
We're not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq," Obama said in the interview.
"But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void," he said.
08.15 Hundreds of Yazidi women have been taken captive by Isis, Iraq's human rights ministry said yesterday.
"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them," a spokesman. "We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."
08.10 Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Iraq crisis. US planes yesterday launched strikes against militants of the Islamic State group in northern Iraq after President Barack Obama pledged to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and also protect American officials working in the country.
President Obama's order for the first air strikes on Iraq since he put an end to US occupation in 2011 came after Islamic State (IS) militants made massive gains on the ground, seizing a dam and forcing a mass exodus of religious minorities.
American planes also conducted a second airdrop on Saturday morning of food and water to aid thousands of refuges, mainly of the Yazidi faith, trapped in Iraq's Sinjar mountains.
Here is a picture made available by the US Department of Defense today of a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in preparation for a humanitarian airdrop over Iraq on Friday.
Source: EPA, telegraph
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