20,000 Iraqis have safely fled Mt Sinjar

ARBIL, Aug 10 (agencies): At least 20,000 civilians who had been besieged by jihadists on a mountain in northern Iraq have safely escaped to Syria and been escorted by Kurdish forces back into Iraq, officials said Sunday.
An official from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish government at the Fishkhabur crossing point said 30,000 displaced who had fled Mount Sinjar had come via Syria and crossed back into Iraq.
Lawmaker Vian Dakhil, who is from the Yazidi minority most of the Mount Sinjar displaced belong to, said 20,000 to 30,000 had managed to flee and were now in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Meanwhile:  US jets attacked jihadists who have besieged civilians on an Iraqi mountain for a week, as Britain and France Sunday joined a desperate race to save them from starvation.
Two days after Washington deployed its airforce over Iraq, a coordinated Western aid effort was shaping up to avert what US President Barack Obama warned could be an impending genocide.
An attack by extremist Islamic State (IS) militants on the Sinjar region a week ago sent thousands-many of them from the Yazidi minority-scurrying into a nearby mountain.
Most have since been stranded on Mount Sinjar in searing summer heat with little food and water. A Yazidi leader warned Saturday that they would not survive much longer.
US forces "successfully (conducted) four airstrikes to defend Yazidi civilians being indiscriminately attacked" near Sinjar, the US military said late Saturday.
Obama has said he was confident the US airforce could prevent IS fighters "from going up the mountain and slaughtering the people who are there" but added the next step of creating a safe passage was "logistically complicated".
US and Iraqi cargo planes have been air dropping food and water over Mount Sinjar, a barren 60-kilometre (35 miles) ridge that local legend holds as the final resting place of Noah's Ark.