(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) The UN on Sunday urged the federal government in Baghdad and the authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq to cooperate fully to face a crisis, after the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the Iraqi town of Sinjar, west of Ninawa. The UN warned of a tragedy.
"A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar," the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in a statement, after ISIL militants captured Sinjar, near the Syrian border, which previously received thousands of displaced people seeking safety.
The capture of the town has displaced about 200,000 Yazidis and "The United Nations has grave concerns for the physical safety of these civilians," the statement said.
The UN noted that it was particularly concerned by the fate of civilians who fled into the Jabal Sinjar mountains and could be trapped inside an area completely surrounded by the militants.
"The humanitarian situation of these civilians is reported as dire, and they are in urgent need of basic items including food, water and medicine," said Mladenov.
Kurdish troops controlled Sinjar before they withdrew earlier today, and the town became the second consecutive loss for the Peshmerga fighters, who had lost the Zumar and two nearby oilfields to ISIL a day before.
Meanwhile, Iraqi President Fuad Masoum and Mladenov's deputy for political affairs Georgi Boston, the situation of the displaced Yazidis and Christians, as well as the conditions of other minorities in Iraq.
A presidential statement said that the meeting had discussed the tense situation and the negative implications on the people in areas controlled by the terrorist groups, the latest of which is Sinjar.
Masoum said that people in such areas, especially Yazidis and Christians are facing a fierce terrorist attack from criminal gangs, prompting alerting efforts of all to help the afflicted.
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