Iraqi Relief Flights Rescue Dozens, but Leave Thousands Behind
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Version 0 of 1. Dramatic images posted online Monday showed small numbers of Iraqis driven from their homes by extremist militants scrambling aboard military helicopters in the Sinjar mountains, where tens of thousands of people, mainly from the Yazidi religious minority, have been stranded. Like Christians in northern Iraq, followers of the ancient Yazidi faith have been pressed to convert or face death by fighters from the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that has seized control of parts of Nineveh province where the sect’s adherents are concentrated. The Iraqi military has been trying to relieve the suffering of the Yazidis with air drops of essential goods and small-scale evacuations by helicopter. Jonathan Rugman and Philippa Collins of Britain’s Channel 4 News documented one of the relief missions, flying from the northern Iraqi city of Zakho on a helicopter stocked with food, water and dehydration salts. Mr. Rugman reported on Twitter, and in a post for Mashable, that at one stage in the mission, when the helicopter was able to land briefly, hungry and dehydrated Yazidis scrambled to get on board. “They cried as they piled on top of each other,” he wrote. “It was very disturbing to watch.” “At one point, one of the airmen began punching and kicking refugees because they were besieging the aircraft and they were in danger of overwhelming it, in their battle for a seat,” Mr. Rugman reported. “So what you had, the scene was this: the crew was throwing out more cardboard boxes of aid through the door and, in the opposite direction, old men and women and children were scrambling to get aboard the helicopter to escape their ordeal.” Ivan Watson and Warzer Jaff reported on another rescue mission on Monday in photographs and video for CNN. Another reporter who observed a flight on Monday, John Irvine of Britain’s ITV News, watched as five men were forced to get off the helicopter on which he was riding after an attempt to take off failed because the vehicle was too heavy. Late last week, the Kurdish news site Rudaw had captured similar images of a rescue mission in a video report posted on YouTube with English subtitles. Video of another group of stranded Iraqis fighting to get on board a helicopter, recorded on Sunday, was posted on YouTube by Michel Reimon, a member of the Austrian Green Party who serves in the European Parliament. Mr. Reimon narrates his video report in German, with English and French translations posted online, but the images largely speak for themselves. |