Militants’ Siege on Mountain in Iraq Is Over, Pentagon Says

By HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape.

An initial report from about a dozen Marines and Special Operations forces who arrived on Tuesday and spent 24 hours on the northern Iraqi mountain said that “the situation is much more manageable,” a senior Defense official said in an interview.

“A rescue effort now is much more unlikely,” the official said.

Defense officials could not say how many Yazidis remained on the mountain, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was expected to make a statement later Wednesday night.

The announcement came after American military advisers landed on Mount Sinjar early Wednesday to begin assessing how to organize the evacuation. The United States had said it would consider using American ground troops to assist in the rescue if recommended by the military team.

Mr. Hagel said it was “far less likely now” that the United States would undertake a rescue mission because the assessment team reported far fewer refugees than previously thought, and that those still on the mountain were in relatively good condition.

Several thousand Yazidis remain on the mountain, a senior United States official said, but not the tens of thousands who originally were believed to be there. Some of the people who remain on Mount Sinjar indicated to American forces that they considered the mountain to be a place of refuge and a home, and did not want to leave, a second United States official said.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Rear Adm.l John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that “the team has assessed that there are far fewer Yazidis on Mount Sinjar than previously feared, in part because of the success of the humanitarian airdrops.” He credited American airstrikes as well as the “efforts of the pesh merga and the ability of thousands of Yazidis to evacuate from the mountain each night over the last several days.” Defense officials said the evacuations were done in secret with the help of the Kurdish pesh merga fighters.

The latest twist came just hours after Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters in Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacation, that the president was likely to receive recommendations about how to mount a rescue operation in the next several days. He said those recommendations could have included the use of American ground troops.

But Mr. Rhodes made those comments as the secret team of Marines and Special Operations forces were already on the ground on Mount Sinjar in the middle of a 24-hour trip to talk to the refugees and pesh merga fighters on the mountain.

Earlier on Wednesday, France, Britain and Germany all said they would increase their efforts to aid the people stranded on the mountain — where reports indicated that the Yazidis were baking in the heat and near starvation — and to fight militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.