DOHUK: Thousands of civilians who escaped a jihadist siege streamed into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq on Wednesday as the West boosted efforts to assist people still trapped and arm Kurds battling to break the siege.

The United States has carried out air strikes against jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group in Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, where the UN refugee agency has said tens of thousands of civilians, many of them members of the Yazidi minority, remain stranded.

Thousands poured across a border bridge into camps in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region after trekking through neighbouring Syria to find refuge, most with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

Some women carried exhausted children, weeping as they reached the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan after fleeing the jihadist offensive which drove Kurdish forces from their home villages.

But large numbers of people, including the most vulnerable, remain trapped on Mount Sinjar, said Mahmud Bakr, 45. “My father Khalaf is 70 years old — he cannot make this journey,” he said as he crossed back into Iraq.

UN minority rights expert Rita Izsak has warned the trapped civilians face “a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours.” For those who managed to escape the jihadist siege, the relief of reaching relative safety was tempered by the spartan conditions of the camps hurriedly erected by the Iraqi Kurdish authorities to accommodate them.

“We were besieged for 10 days in the mountain. The whole world is talking about us but we did not get any real help,” said Khodr Hussein. “We went from hunger in Sinjar to hunger in this camp. “As the international outcry over the plight of the Yazidis mounted, Western governments pledged to step up help for those still trapped, and the United Nations declared a Level III emergency in Iraq, allowing it to speed up its response.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said “detailed plans are now being put in place” to rescue them. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington was looking at options to bring them out.Washington has already said it will ship weapons to the Kurds to help them fight back against the jihadists and on Wednesday France followed suit.

On Wednesday, the office of top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani released a July letter in which he called for incumbent premier Nuri al-Maliki to be replaced, in another major blow to his bid for a third term.

“The president has decided, in agreement with Baghdad, to deliver arms in the coming hours,” President Francois Hollande’s office said.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States has sent 130 more military advisers to northern Iraq to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2014