On the mountain, between 6,000 and 7,000 civilians and between 2,000 and 3,000 Yazidi fighters are still trapped and struggling to stay alive, cut off from any supply routes, the Yazidi leaders said. Since the airstrikes trailed off to a trickle in October, ISIS has taken over the five remaining Yazidi towns near Mount Sinjar, killing hundreds of civilians and abducting hundreds more.
Even the humanitarian airdrops have halted. The Iraqi government provided two helicopters to deliver aid, but they are old and fly only once or twice a week, Babasheikh said. About 100 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are on the mountain, he added, but they don’t engage ISIS. The extremist group continues to fight to take the mountain once and for all, and the situation on Mount Sinjar could go from dire to catastrophic within a couple of weeks, the Yazidi leaders said.
“President Obama promised that they are not going to let ISIS get any more land, that they are not going to let them get another genocide on the Yazidis. But this is going to be worse than in August,” said Kamal Elias, a Yazidi activist who is part of the delegation. “If ISIS gets to the mountain, all of these people are going to be slaughtered, and then it’s going to take years for the U.S. or anyone else to get them out of the mountain.”
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