EDGARTOWN, Mass. — President Barack Obama is considering a range of military options, including airlifts and creating safe passages, for rescuing thousands of Iraqi refugees trapped on a mountain, the White House said. A small team of U.S. troops secretly scouted the site Wednesday.
Following the team’s assessment, it was deemed “far less likely now” that the U.S. would undertake a rescue mission on the mountain because far fewer refugees were found there than previously thought, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.
Hagel said the refugees on the mountain were in relatively good condition.
U.S. officials said only several thousand refugees remained on the mountain, far lower than the tens of thousands that had been reported earlier.
Hagel credited that in part to U.S. airstrikes giving people opportunity to get off the mountain and the food and water the U.S. has airdropped to the refugees sustain them.
A U.S. military-led rescue mission on Sinjar Mountain could involve putting American troops on the ground. But the White House insisted that their mission would be strictly a humanitarian rescue and would not constitute a return to combat 2 1/2 years after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq. Obama is expected to make a decision in days.
“We don’t believe that involves U.S. troops re-entering a combat role in Iraq,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser. “It involves frankly a very difficult logistical challenge of moving folks who are in danger on that mountain into a safer position.”
The U.S. has been delivering food and water to the refugees for several days. But Rhodes said it was unsustainable to let thousands of people stay on the mountain.
“There needs to be a lasting solution that gets that population to a safe space where they can receive more permanent assistance,” he told reporters traveling with the president during his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
