In a televised late-night statement from the White House yesterday August 7th, US president Barack Obama said he has authorized US airstrikes in Northern Iraq to defend hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims being hunted down and slaughtered by ISIS. This is coming weeks after American military planes carried out airdrops of humanitarian aid to thousands of Iraqi Yazidis surrounded by ISIS militants and desperately in need of food and water.

ISIS has been ruthlessly hunting and slaughtering members of the ancient Yazidi religion, a faith derived from Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, who ISIS have denounced as devil-worshipers on account of their ancient set of beliefs. Pictured left is an ISIS fighter posing next to the body of Yazidi. Pictured right Yazidi on Mount Sinjar carry the bodies of children killed by ISIS. Continue...

Thousands of Iraqi Christians have also fled their homes after the ISIS hoard seized Qaraqush, Iraq's largest Christian town, and several others near Mosul following the withdrawal of Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

Obama's dramatic call to arms came as the chaos engulfing Iraq escalated rapidly last night with a re-energised Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant storming towns in the north, executing villagers and chasing thousands from their homes into the desert.

Up to 50,000 terrified Yazidis - half of them children - have sought refuge from the bloodshed in the surrounding mountains. But there they face another killer: searing desert heat and the constant threat of starvation.

Many have already died of hunger and thirst as they struggle to survive on just the food they could carry in temperatures exceeding 42C.
Photographs have emerged of Yazidi men carrying the bodies of dozens of young children apparently killed by ISIS militants, who in turn have posted pictures online of themselves posing next to dead Yazidi men.

The dead men's wives were reportedly kept as trophies to be gifted to unmarried jihadist fighters.


Thousands of Iraqi Christians have also fled their homes after the ISIS hoard seized Qaraqush, Iraq's largest Christian town, and several others near Mosul following the withdrawal of Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

Obama's dramatic call to arms came as the chaos engulfing Iraq escalated rapidly last night with a re-energised Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant storming towns in the north, executing villagers and chasing thousands from their homes into the desert.

Up to 50,000 terrified Yazidis - half of them children - have sought refuge from the bloodshed in the surrounding mountains. But there they face another killer: searing desert heat and the constant threat of starvation.

Many have already died of hunger and thirst as they struggle to survive on just the food they could carry in temperatures exceeding 42C.
Photographs have emerged of Yazidi men carrying the bodies of dozens of young children apparently killed by ISIS militants, who in turn have posted pictures online of themselves posing next to dead Yazidi men.

The dead men's wives were reportedly kept as trophies to be gifted to unmarried jihadist fighters.