At least 20,000 Iraqis have safely fled Mt Sinjar

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. The breakthrough coincided with US air raids on Islamic State fighters in the Sinjar area of northwestern Iraq on Saturday. Shawkat Barbahari, an official from the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq put the number of people who escaped the siege and crossed back into Iraqi Kurdistan at 30,000. ‘The Kurdish peshmerga forces have succeeded in making 30,000 Yazidis who fled Mount Sinjar, most of them women and children, cross into Syria and return to Kurdistan,’ said Barbahari, who is in charge of the Fishkhabur crossing with Syria. ‘Most of them crossed yesterday and today, this operation is ongoing and we really don't know how many are still up there on the mountain,’ he said, according to AFP.