Updated Aug. 31, 2014 1:31 p.m. ET
This U.S. Air Forces Central Command handout photo shows parachute riggers assembling 40 container delivery system bundles of water for a humanitarian airdrop over the area of Amirli, Iraq, on Saturday. US Air Forces Central Command
BAGHDAD—U.S. airstrikes helped break a two-month siege by Sunni militants on a Shiite town on Sunday, in apparent coordination with ground attacks by Shiite militias, local civilian fighters and Kurdish troops.
The attacks around Amirli, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, helped to avert what had been one of the country's biggest looming humanitarian crises. Residents of the town of 17,000, most of them Shiite Turkmen, faced famine, thirst and diseases such as diarrhea from drinking dirty river water.
Fighters from Amirli thanked the militias and Kurdish regional forces known as Peshmerga for helping them break the siege by Islamic State insurgents, speaking in interviews on Iraqi state television. An Iraqi military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, declared the town liberated. The breakthrough came after the U.S. launched three airstrikes against Islamic State forces, the Pentagon said. The airstrikes were in conjunction with a U.S.-led international airdrop of relief supplies on the town.
The U.S. began airstrikes in Iraq in early August partly to avert another humanitarian disaster. Islamic State militants at the time had besieged thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority, surrounding and trapping them on a mountain in northern Iraq.
Members of the ancient religious group with ties to Iraq's Kurdish ethnic minority had spent about two weeks on the Sinjar Mountains before Kurdish and other Iraqi fighters, supported by U.S. airstrikes, pushed back the insurgents and allowed the Yazidis to escape.
This is the first U.S. military intervention in Iraq since a decadelong war ended in 2011. The Obama administration is considering whether to expand attacks on Islamic State to target the group in its base in Syria.
A child cries in a military helicopter after being evacuated by Iraqi forces from Amirli, north of Baghdad, on Friday. Reuters
Both Shiites and Turkmen are among groups targeted by Islamic State. The extremists consider them, as well as Yazidis and Christians, apostates deserving of death. Shiite Muslims are a religious majority in Iraq, but Turkmen are an ethnic minority.
The Pentagon called the latest intervention a modest expansion of U.S. military operations in Iraq. But military officials were careful to put constraints on the mission.
"These operations will be limited in their scope and duration as necessary to address this emerging humanitarian crisis and protect the civilians trapped in Amirli," the U.S. Central Command said.
The three airstrikes in the vicinity of Amirli bring to 118 the number of such attacks across Iraq since Aug. 8. The strikes destroyed three Humvees, an armed vehicle, a checkpoint and one tank, according to Central Command.
The airdrops for Amirli marked a new phase in international cooperation for humanitarian efforts in Iraq. Planes from the U.S., Britain, France and Australia all dropped food, water and medical supplies.
In Washington, top lawmakers stepped up pressure on the White House to more forcefully deal with the Islamic State, three days after President Barack Obama said the U.S. has no immediate plans to escalate military operations against extremists
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) outlined specific steps the U.S. should take to break the group's grip in Iraq.
"It requires additional U.S. troops—not ground combat units, but it's going to require some more special forces, it's going to require some more forward air controllers, it's going to require some more advisers for training the Iraqi military, which right now as we know is near collapse. We have to also work closely with the Kurds."
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