Channel 4 foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Rugman, speaking from the city of Dahuk last night, said: “I met a woman who had just come into Iraq from Syria, and she was caring a two-month-old baby. And I said to her, well, how did you both survive on the mountain? And she said, well, my milk did run out, and I got a mountain goat to suckle my two-month-old baby in order to keep the boy alive.”

The reporter went on to describe the baby as “healthy” as he met the woman while she was receiving food and water from an aid helicopter in the Sinjar mountains.

“The baby who was screaming a pretty – I think, a healthy scream, in the sense that the baby is alive, and the baby has made it. But it seems they are so desperate, and the sense of abandonment is very great, I think.”