ISIS fighters are accused of executing some 700 tribesmen who rose against them in eastern Syria, as Bashar Assad said he is ready to back Kurdish forces against the jihadis.
A Yazidi militia group has entered the fight against ISIS, clashing with militants near Sinjar—while Baghdad's army command objected to foreign military aid to Kurdish forces.
The US dropped plans for a rescue mission for besieged Yazidis—over the protests of Yazidi leaders—as the "terrorist" PKK joined US-backed Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS.
Obama dispatched 130 new military advisors to Iraqi Kurdistan, but is resisting the Kurdistan government's appeal for more arms to fight ISIS. France has pledged new arms shipments.
Some 150,000 Shabaks and 250,000 Turkmen as well as 200,000 Yazidis and 100,000 Christians have been displaced by the ISIS onslaught in northern Iraq.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces with US air cover started to drive back ISIS from Erbil—but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's refusal to step down is driving Sunnis into the arms of the jihadists.
Egypt called for an "Arab Alliance" to halt an ISIS advance on the Gulf States, as US air-strikes hit ISIS positions near Sinjar. Obama said there is no "timetable" for the strikes to end.
US jets and drones carried out air-strikes outside Erbil in an effort to drive back the ISIS advance on the Kurdish regional capital, while Iraqi warplanes struck near Mosul.
In authorizing US air-strikes in northern Iraq, President Obama invoked the responsibility to protect the Yazidis from ISIS and avert a potential "genocide."
The Kurdish Regional Government appeals to Obama for arms to fight ISIS—while Baghdad demands the Kurds return arms seized from its own disintegrating national army.
Iraq's government persuaded a US judge to order the seizure of $100 million of oil in a tanker anchored off Galveston that it claims was illegally pumped in Kurdistan.
The ISIS militants that have seized Mosul are engaged in a campaign of cultural cleansing—targeting not only the citiy's inhabitants, but its artistic and historical treasures.
