Zee Media Bureau/Supriya Jha
Washington: As US drones and fighter jets carried out more strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq, President Barack Obama set out on a two-week summer vacation at Massachusetts island with family.
Like every year, Obama will celebrate the summer at an island off the Massachusetts coast, with First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Shasha, and his dogs Bo and Sunny.
However, the President is expect to sneak back to Washington for two days for some official work.
The President`s vacation came only after he ordered targeted military strikes on the ISIS in Iraq, as the Sunni extremists wreaked havoc again by taking the town of Sinjar a week ago that forced the residents to flee to the mountains.
According to the reports, tens of thousands of people are hiding in the mountains and risk starving to death.
A UNICEF report said that dozens of Sinjar children have died of dehydration.
President Obama ordered strikes on the ISIS on August 8, saying that the US was acting “to protect our American diplomats and military advisors serving in the city of Erbil”.
The initial round of strikes targeted the IS militants targeting the Kurdish city of Irbil.
But the latest strike that was launched on Saturday hit those IS militants which were firing on Yazidi people near Sinjar.
According to a US military statement, in the latest strike was carried out using fighter jets and drones that destroyed an IS armoured personnel carrier (APC) that was firing on civilians, reported the BBC.
Secondly, the President said that the US was arranging humanitarian aid for thousands of Iraqis who were trapped under the mountains.
The US State department and Pentagon posted videos of the US humanitarian aid being airdropped to Iraqi civilians trapped on a mountain by ISIL.
US military aircraft conduct 3rd airdrop of food & water to Iraqi's on Mt. Sinjar. 72 more bundles delivered, bringing total to 52K meals.
— Rear Adm. John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 10, 2014
Even as Obama has ordered strikes in Iraq, he clarified that the US had no intension to be dragged into another war in Iraq saying, “American troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis there”.
The US strikes in Iraq come three years after the US troops left Iraqi soil in 2011 after a long-drawn war that saw ousting of Saddam Hussein.
The latest strike was triggered as the Islamic State continued their onslaught in Iraq murdering and executing people summarily.
The Sunni militants of the Islamic State launched a lightning offensive in Iraq in June and captured huge swathes of Iraq, declaring a Caliphate in the occupied areas.
