Obama authorizes Iraq air strikes

WASHINGTON D.C.: President Barack Obama ordered US warplanes back into the skies over Iraq on Thursday (Friday in Manila) to drop food to refugees and if necessary launch air strikes to halt what he said was a potential “genocide.”

The US air armada’s first mission was to drop food and water to thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority besieged by Sunni extremist fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS). Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have also fled.