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| Iraq crisis: US team assess Mount Sinjar situation | Iraq crisis: US team assess Mount Sinjar situation |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A US military team in Iraq has flown to Mount Sinjar in the north, where tens of thousands are trapped, to assess the situation, officials say. | A US military team in Iraq has flown to Mount Sinjar in the north, where tens of thousands are trapped, to assess the situation, officials say. |
| Defence officials said the operation took place earlier on Wednesday, and all personnel had now returned safely to their base in Irbil. | Defence officials said the operation took place earlier on Wednesday, and all personnel had now returned safely to their base in Irbil. |
| The US has sent hundreds of military advisers to Iraq to help people fleeing militant group Islamic State (IS). | The US has sent hundreds of military advisers to Iraq to help people fleeing militant group Islamic State (IS). |
| IS fighters have seized large swathes of northern Iraq in recent months. | |
| Tens of thousands of people from religious minorities have been forced to flee their homes. | |
| 'Humanitarian crisis' | |
| The US has said it is considering airlifts and the creation of safe passages for fleeing civilians - but insists no US ground forces will be in a combat role. | |
| The UN says members of the Yazidi sect are among those who are stranded in desperate conditions on Mount Sinjar. | |
| On Wednesday, the UN declared the Iraq crisis a "level three emergency", its highest level of humanitarian crisis. | |
| Planes have been dropping aid supplies on Mount Sinjar for several nights - but US officials said this was not sustainable. | |
| "There needs to be a lasting solution that gets that population to a safe space where they can receive more permanent assistance," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. | |
| The rapid advance across Iraq by IS militant fighters has thrown the country into chaos. | |
| IS overran Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, in June. Its fighters had taken the central city of Falluja and parts of nearby Ramadi in December 2013. | |
| On 29 June, IS said it had created a caliphate, or Islamic state, stretching from Aleppo in Syria to the province of Diyala in Iraq. |