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Iraq humanitarian crisis at peak level

U.N. declaration to trigger additional goods, funds, assets

The Columbian
Published: August 14, 2014, 12:00am

BAGHDAD — The United Nations on Wednesday announced its highest level of emergency for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes and tens of thousands had been trapped on a desert mountain by the advance of Islamic militants across the north of the country.

Since June, Iraq has been facing an onslaught by the Islamic State group and allied Sunni militants across much of the country’s north and west. In recent weeks, the crisis has worsened as the militant fighters swept through new towns in the north, displacing members of the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities, and threatening the neighboring Iraqi Kurdish autonomy zone.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled the advance to take refuge in the remote desert Sinjar mountain range. The U.S. and Iraqi military have dropped food and water supplies, and in recent days Kurds from neighboring Syria battled to open a corridor to the mountain, allowing some 45,000 to escape.

The U.N. said it would provide increased support to those who have escaped Sinjar and to 400,000 other Iraqis who have fled since June to the Kurdish province of Dahuk. Others have fled to other parts of the Kurdish region or further south. A total of 1.5 million have been displaced by the fighting since the insurgents captured Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June and quickly swept over other parts of the country.

The United States has been carrying out airstrikes in recent days against Islamic State fighters, helping fend back their advance on Kurdish regions.

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