Iraqi Forces Break ISIS Siege Of Shiite Town As US Bombs Targets

Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi forces Sunday broke through to the jihadist-besieged town of Amerli, where thousands of people have been trapped for more than two months with dwindling food and water, officials said.

"Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege," security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta told AFP.

Talib al-Bayati, an official responsible for a nearby area, also said that the siege of the Turkmen Shiite-majority town has been broken, as did Nihad al-Bayati, who had been fighting to defend the town against the jihadists.

Iraqi security forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga fighters all took part in the operation, the biggest military success for Baghdad since a lightning jihadist-led offensive overran large parts of the country in June, sweeping security forces aside.

Iraqi forces later managed to stem the militant onslaught, but had since struggled to regain ground.

Residents of Amerli faced major shortages of food and water, and were in danger both because of their Shiite faith, which jihadists consider heresy, and their resistance to the militants, which has drawn harsh retribution elsewhere.

The United States carried out air strikes on Saturday against Islamic State fighters near the besieged Shi'ite town of Amerli in northern Iraq and airdropped humanitarian aid to civilians trapped there, the Pentagon said.

President Barack Obama authorized the new military action, broadening U.S. operations in Iraq amid an international outcry over the threat to Amerli's mostly ethnic Turkmen population.

U.S. aircraft delivered over a hundred bundles of emergency supplies and more aid was dropped from British, French and Australian planes, officials said, signaling headway in Obama's efforts to draw allies into the fight against Islamic State.

Armed residents of Amerli have managed to fend off attacks by Islamic State fighters, who regard the town's majority Shi'ite Turkmen population as apostates. More than 15,000 people remain trapped inside.

"At the request of the government of Iraq, the United States military today airdropped humanitarian aid to the town of Amerli, home to thousands of Shia Turkmen who have been cut off from receiving food, water, and medical supplies for two months by ISIL," Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said, using an alternative name for Islamic State.

"In conjunction with this airdrop, U.S. aircraft conducted coordinated air strikes against nearby ISIL terrorists in order to support this humanitarian assistance operation," he said, adding that a key objective was to prevent a militant attack on civilians in the town.

He said the operations would be "limited in their scope and duration" in order to protect Amerli's population.

Warplanes hit three Humvee patrol vehicles, a tank and an armed vehicle held by militants in addition to a checkpoint controlled by the group, according to the military's Central Command, which runs U.S. operations in the Middle East. "All aircraft safely exited the area," it said in a statement.

When Obama ordered the first air strikes and air drops in Iraq earlier this month, he justified the military operation in part to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe for thousands of ethnic Yazidis trapped by Islamic State militants on Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq.

In mid-August, he declared that the militant siege there had been broken.