Nina Shea:
On Wednesday, Qaraqosh, the largest Christian town in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province, came under assault from the Islamic State, and all 50 to 60,000 of its residents have fled to Erbil in Kurdistan. In June, Qaraqosh’s residents had fled in terror when Mosul was taken but, some 80 percent of them had since returned. The recent exodus was triggered when jihadists’ mortars killed two children and a 30-year-old woman.
Yesterday, the Christian residents of other Nineveh towns and villages, Bartilla, and Bahzany, also left and sought safe haven in the monastery of Mar Mattai, as well as in Erbil and Duhok. Ba’ashiqa and the Ba’ashiqa Monastery are being evacuated by their inhabitants and the displaced civilians who had recently sought refuge there. The Yazidi and Christian families who lived in Ein Sifni are all fleeing.
The enormity of the humanitarian crisis of the cascading exodus from Nineveh was overshadowed, though, by the early reports indicating genocide is taking place against the people of Sinjar, who are mostly followers of the Yazidi religion but also include some Christians.
The Yazidi city of Sinjar and the towns of Tal Afar and Zummar, captured on Sunday by the Islamic State, remain under jihadi control. Some 200,000 of their citizens fled, mostly to Kurdistan. But about 40,000 are now in a truly desperate situation, trapped on Mount Sinjar, where they had fled on foot without provisions and are now dying. Quoting a UNICEF spokesperson, the Washington Post reports today: “There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads. There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”
Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana reports that Kurdistan’s High Commission of Human Rights airlifted ten shipments of aid, each with 20 tons of provisions, to those on Mount Sinjar today.
Others who did not manage to escape have been executed, abducted into sex slavery, or are being used by jihadis as human shields.
The following is a description of their ongoing ordeal from a report sent today by Christiana Patto of the Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq:
I have not seen help from Obama for any of these folks.
BUT sub-saharan Africa is getting all sorts of aid (or promises of it anyway).
Odd, if you look at it.
Most of these African leaders are kleptocrats with billions in Swiss accounts.
Many of them have outlawed all homosexuality, some adding a death penalty.
A few allow slavery.
Many suppress democracy, some even executing political opponents.
Many of Obama’s new buddies in Africa are suppressing news and arresting media members on the ”wrong side” of expressing opinions.
The deep corruption rampant in Africa as well as the massive human rights’ abuses are ignored by Obama.
ISIS seems to be one of Obama’s allies, even though most of America does not realize it.
The Islamization of Africa is continuing south and all these abuses are symptomatic of that.
A traitor and terrorist sits in the wipe house.
He, his alleged wife, and trashy kids running and playing in CA. on the US taxpayers dollar.
What did the party for dictators, kleptocrats, homophobes, and mass murders cost the US taxpayer?
Human waste always floats to the top of every cesspool.
It’s a good thing ISIS isn’t Jewish or the whole world would rain holy hell upon them for being homicidal maniacs. Alas, they are just Muslims killing Christians; who gives a damn, certainly not out golfing president.
He yells from the fairway, “Let the games continue.”
It’s as though Obama them to win.