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Special to The Tribune
US jets begin air strikes in Iraq
President Obama vows to protect minority Yezidis from ISIS threat in Irbil
Ashish Kumar Sen in Washington DC

US jets conducted a second round of targeted air strikes against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters in Iraq on Friday, hours after President Barack Obama authorised the action and ordered humanitarian relief to besieged Iraqis.

Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby said in the first strike two F/A-18 aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on mobile artillery used by ISIS militants to shell Kurdish forces defending the city of Irbil.

In a statement from the White House on Thursday night, Obama said the air strikes were intended to protect American diplomats at the US Consulate in Irbil and military advisers deployed in Iraq earlier this summer in the face of ISIS’ advancing threat. Obama, who came to office in 2009 on the promise of ending US involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq, said he was compelled to act now to protect Americans.

He said he was also responding to a request from the Iraqi government to help thousands of minority Yezidis who have been trapped on Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq by ISIS militants and faced the prospect of genocide.

“[ISIS] forces have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide. So these innocent families are faced with a horrible choice: descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger,” Obama said.

“When we face a situation like we do on that mountain — with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale — when we have a mandate to help, in this case a request from the Iraqi government, and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain,” he said.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday night US forces had acted on Obama’s orders and provided food and water to thousands of Iraqis. Hagel said the US military may also conduct targeted air strikes to help Iraqi forces fighting to break ISIS’ siege of Mount Sinjar.

The military operations are the first by the US since December of 2011 when Obama pulled all US troops out of Iraq after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to grant them immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.

Obama assured Americans that the US was not going back to war in Iraq and that Iraqis alone were responsible for the future of their country. “American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq,” he said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, said ISIS’ “campaign of terror against the innocent, including Yezidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide.”

UK issues advisory

The UK Foreign Office on Friday urged Britons in Irbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk provinces of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region to "leave now" following attacks by extremists. It advised against all travel to areas of the Kurdistan region affected by fighting.