Iraq crisis: Australia offers to help US provide humanitarian aid, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says

Updated

Australia has offered to help the United States provide humanitarian assistance to refugees in Iraq, the Prime Minister says.

Tony Abbott says he spoke with US officials overnight to discuss what has been described as "potential genocide" in Iraq.

"This is a humanitarian disaster potentially on a massive scale," he said.

"President [Barack] Obama has already said that it has the potential to become a genocide and that's why it's important for Australia to join with our international partners in doing what we can to render humanitarian assistance."

Mr Abbott says Australia has two C-130 Hercules military aircraft based in the United Arab Emirates that could assist with air drops within days.

"We're looking to see how quickly we can get crews there," he said.

US military aircraft have completed a second air drop of food and water to thousands of members of the Yazidi minority stranded on Mount Sinjar, having fled Islamic militants.

On Thursday, the United States dropped thousands of litres of drinking water and 8,000 packaged meals to the Yazidis, who risk starvation on the barren mountain top.

"Some 40,000 women and children mostly are exposed on a mountain surrounded, as I understand it, by [Islamic State] forces that are threatening to kill them," Mr Abbott said.

"They're exposed on this mountaintop without food, without water, without shelter."

Mr Abbott's announcement comes a day after American aircraft bombed positions held by Islamic State (IS) insurgents in northern Iraq in the first major US military action there since it withdrew troops in 2011.

Two US F/A-18 aircraft dropped 225-kilogram, laser-guided bombs on a piece of mobile artillery belonging to IS, the Sunni extremist movement that has swept across Iraq and Syria, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.

Mr Obama has pledged a limited mission of targeted airstrikes to defend the town of Erbil, where several US personnel are based, and to break the IS siege on the Yazidis.

Mr Abbott says the US airstrikes are "designed not to pick sides in a war".

"This is designed, and this is what President Obama is talking about, this is designed to protect civilians from a murderous onslaught," he said.

"[The Islamic State] are not seeking to set up a terrorist enclave, but a terrorist state and we've seen, with our own eyes on our television screens, exactly what happens to people who fall into their hands."

Mr Abbott says he understands the US will continue the air drops "for as long as these people are exposed on Mount Sinjar".

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, government-and-politics, world-politics, australia, iraq

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