20,000 Yazidis flee to safety
West increases efforts to save the thousands still trapped; Iraq says some buried alive
Thousands of displaced Iraqis who had been besieged on a mountain by jihadists escaped to safety yesterday while Western powers ramped up efforts to save those still stranded with air drops.
US jets conducted a new round of air strikes while congressional Republicans criticised Obama's intervention as ineffective and called for more aggressive military steps.
Republican Peter King of New York criticised Obama for insisting he would not send ground troops to combat Islamic State forces in Iraq, adding that the United States had been too timid. Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain also said Obama was not going far enough.
An attack by extremist Islamic State militants on the Sinjar region a week ago sent thousands - many of them from the Yazidi minority - scurrying into a nearby mountain.
Yazidi lawmaker Vian Dakhil had warned on Saturday that those stranded on Mount Sinjar in searing summer heat with little food and water would not survive much longer.
Yesterday, she and other officials said at least 20,000 had managed to flee the siege, with the help of Kurdish troops, and cross into northern Iraq's Kurdistan region via Syria.