❑ IRAQI JETS HIT JIHADISTS

Car bomb kills 15

KIRKUK, Iraq, Aug 26, (Agencies): Iraq carried out air strikes Tuesday against jihadists who have for months besieged the town of Amerli, where residents are short on food and water and face a “possible massacre.”

The nine strikes by Iraqi warplanes targeted forces from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, Colonel Mustafa al-Bayati said.

IS spearheaded a major offensive in June that overran large areas of Iraq and cut off the Shiite Turkmen-majority town.

Time is running out for its residents, who are in major danger both because of their faith, which jihadists consider to be heresy, and their resistance against the fighters, which has drawn deadly retribution elsewhere.

“The people are still besieged and stranded there,” said Eliana Nabaa, the spokeswoman for the UN mission in Iraq. There is “no possibility of evacuating

them so far,” and only limited humanitarian assistance is reaching the town, she said.

UN Iraq envoy Nickolay Mladenov has called for an urgent effort to help the town, saying residents face a “possible massacre.”

Nihad al-Bayati, who worked as an engineer at the Tikrit oil refinery but is now fighting to protect his hometown, said its defenders, who are made up of police and volunteers, have repelled two attacks in recent days.

Residents face a major shortage of both food and water, there is no electricity, and the helicopter flights delivering aid and ammunition are targeted with machinegun fire on the way in, and mortar rounds once they land, Bayati said.

“The pilots are suicidal,” he said, but the aircraft have been able to land and depart so far.

Later in the day, a car bomb ripped through a crowded Baghdad intersection during morning rush hour on Tuesday, killing 15 people and wounding at least 37, security and medical officials said.

The blast in Baghdad Jadida left a shallow crater at the intersection and lines of burned and twisted cars still sitting where they were waiting when the explosion struck.

Blood stained a nearby sidewalk, and people worked to clear away the debris from shopfronts smashed by the explosion.

Militants in Iraq frequently target crowded areas, including cafes, markets and mosques, in an effort to cause maximum casualties.

On Monday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a Shiite place of worship, or husseiniyah, in Baghdad Jadida, killing 11 people.

Iraq is struggling to retake large areas overrun by a major jihadist-led militant offensive launched in June, which seized second city Mosul and swept through the country’s Sunni heartland.

Meanwhile, Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said Tuesday at a joint press conference with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Arbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.

The direct arming of Kurdish forces is a contentious issue, because some Iraqi politicians suspect Kurdish leaders have aspirations to break away from the central government completely. The move could also be seen by some as a prelude to Iran’s taking a more direct role in broader Iraqi conflict.

“We asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide us with weapons and ammunition,” Barzani said.

Militants from the Islamic State have clashed with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in recent weeks and taken control of some areas on the periphery of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The UN Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session in Geneva on Monday concerning abuses being committed by Islamic State and other militant groups in Iraq, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The 47 member states of the forum have moral authority to condemn abuses or set up international investigations into war crimes or crimes against humanity, but they cannot impose binding resolutions