Amerliˈs SoS Falls On Deaf Ears?

Tehran, Aug 30, IRNA - Amerli has been under siege for more than two months. How many civilians have to die before the international community realizes that the people of this town need help urgently and they have to help them? They have been completely forgotten. When people around the world continue their daily life and they continue to be entertained by football games and Cinema stars, another Srebrenica massacre is going to occur. On August 21, banners were raised in Baghdadˈs Tahrir Square, pleading for the city of Amerli to be saved from the blockade of the brutal Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters, also known as Daesh, that has been ongoing for the past 70 days. The youths, activists and intellectuals staged a two-day demonstration to attract the attention of the international community and the Iraqi government to the suffering of the region to the north of Baghdad. Around 20,000 Iraqis from the Turkmen Shiite minority live in Amerli, where the Daesh blockade affects 36 surrounding villages. Youth groups and other activists have staged protests in Baghdad to attract international attention to the suffering of Amerli’s residents. The UN has warned that if the Daesh militants enter the Shiite regions, they will massacre the inhabitants. However, the states that helped the Yazidi minority in Sinjar escape the terror organization have disregarded the warnings. The blockade has drained Amerli. Mortars are constantly falling over the city, and the food is running out. Reports say that at least three women died while giving birth because there were no doctors in the only hospital in the region. The children are also parched due to the lack of water. People are drinking from wells they had covered in the past. Diseases have started to spread and there are no treatments available around there. In the region under the siege, the situation has turned even more dramatic by Daeshˈs increasing attempts to enter it. There is no electricity, little remaining medicine and food supplies are dwindling. Unlike recent US intervention to help save members of the Yazidi religious minority trapped on Mount Sinjar in north-western Iraq, there is no dramatic plan to rescue the people of Amerli. In the eyes of those in Amerli, the world has turned its back on them. There are no soldiers in the city and the families are working together to fight Daesh, many of them 13 years old. When Daesh captures a village, they kill them all. They keep just a few girls as sex slaves. Amerli has been under siege for more two months. How long do they have to wait? How much suffering must they see and how many children have to die before the international community realizes that the people of this town need help urgently and they have to help them? They have been completely neglected. It is time for the international community, the Iraqi Army and volunteers to act and help Amerli people before it is too late. Since the Army and volunteers are engaged in the conflict in different areas and there is litter hope to break the siege in near future, airstrikes and heliborne operation is the Amerli peopleˈs last hope./end