US jets attacked jihadists who have besieged civilians on an Iraqi mountain for a week, as Britain and France today joined a desperate race to save them from starvation.
Two days after Washington deployed its airforce over Iraq, a coordinated Western aid effort was shaping up to avert what US President Barack Obama warned could be an impending genocide.
An attack by extremist Islamic State (IS) militants on the Sinjar region a week ago sent thousands -- many of them from the Yazidi minority -- scurrying into a nearby mountain.
Most have since been stranded on Mount Sinjar in searing summer heat with little food and water. A Yazidi leader warned yesterday that they would not survive much longer.
US forces "successfully (conducted) four airstrikes to defend Yazidi civilians being indiscriminately attacked" near Sinjar, the US military said late yesterday.
Obama has said he was confident the US airforce could prevent IS fighters "from going up the mountain and slaughtering the people who are there" but added the next step of creating a safe passage was "logistically complicated".
US and Iraqi cargo planes have been air dropping food and water over Mount Sinjar, a barren 60-kilometre (35 miles) ridge that local legend holds as the final resting place of Noah's Ark.
Britain joined the effort yesterday with its first air drop over Sinjar of food and water.
"The world has been shocked by the plight of the Yazidi community," said International Development Minister Justine Greening.
"Last night the RAF (Royal Air Force) successfully dropped lifesaving UK aid supplies, including clean water and filtration devices, on the mountain."
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also arrived in Iraq, where he is due to oversee the first delivery of French aid for displaced people in the Sinjar area.
"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," Obama said yesterday.
But many civilians have been cowering in caves and are scattered across the range.
Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of Iraq's parliament, warned yesterday that anything short of a mass evacuation was unlikely to save all those who are stranded on the mountain.
Several thousand of mainly Yazidi civilians have managed to flee the mountain but a majority, including the weakest among the displaced, remain trapped.
