This is part three of a three part series. Read part one and part two.

by MATT CETTI-ROBERTS

It’s Dec. 11 in northern Iraq. I’ve ridden on an Iraqi air force helicopter to Mount Sinjar in order to meet the mountain’s Yezidi and Kurdish defenders and the thousands of refugees still stranded there.

Islamic State has laid siege to the mountain since August.

I’m at a Kurdish Peshmerga camp when I hear that the last copter flight of the day is coming in half an hour. There may not be any flights tomorrow.

I make my way to the area where, I’m told, the helicopters usually land—a strip of road next to a building that was once a fort.

Families line up along the road. Two men collect a frail, elderly Yezidi man from a truck. They help him walk, bent over and moaning, to the front of the line closest to me.

They sit him down on a piece of cardboard.

I’ve been warned that I’ll have to fight to get on a helicopter. I’d seen how it was when I arrived. Yezidi fighters—desperate to get off the mountain—pushed and shoved for a spot in the copters’ cabins.