UK Foreign Secretary announces aid air drops to stranded Iraqis
- 10 years ago
ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced on Saturday (August 9) that British aircraft would drop humanitarian supplies to help Iraqis stranded by recent violence.
The first consignment of UK emergency aid was expected to leave "imminently", Hammond said.
Supplies including drinking water and tents are due to be dropped from C130 aircraft over the weekend to help members of the Yazidi religious minority, trapped on a mountainside in Sinjar, seeking shelter from Islamic State militants.
Hammond, who chaired a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee on Saturday afternoon to assess the crisis, said the UK was co-ordinating with the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance.
"Well first of all, we remain deeply concerned about the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq which is being caused by the number of people displaced by the fighting, but also by the extraordinarily cruel treatment of ISIS in the areas that
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced on Saturday (August 9) that British aircraft would drop humanitarian supplies to help Iraqis stranded by recent violence.
The first consignment of UK emergency aid was expected to leave "imminently", Hammond said.
Supplies including drinking water and tents are due to be dropped from C130 aircraft over the weekend to help members of the Yazidi religious minority, trapped on a mountainside in Sinjar, seeking shelter from Islamic State militants.
Hammond, who chaired a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee on Saturday afternoon to assess the crisis, said the UK was co-ordinating with the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance.
"Well first of all, we remain deeply concerned about the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq which is being caused by the number of people displaced by the fighting, but also by the extraordinarily cruel treatment of ISIS in the areas that