A team of about 20 U.S. troops and aid workers who landed Wednesday on Iraqs Mount Sinjar determined that a rescue operation of besieged minorities stranded there is probably unnecessary, the Pentagon said.
There are far fewer refugees left at the northern Iraq location, where tens of thousands were said to have been surrounded by Sunni Muslim extremists, and they are in better condition than previously believed, a Pentagon statement said. It said that humanitarian airdrops and the nightly evacuation of Yazidis on land routes appeared to have lessened the emergency.