A team of U.S. military and humanitarian aid personnel landed on Iraq's Mount Sinjar early on Wednesday to assess how to evacuate thousands of civilians under siege from Islamic State fighters, a U.S. official said.
The United States has not ruled out using American ground forces in an operation to extract the trapped civilians, but they will not engage in combat, the White House said.
The U.S. team flew in darkness early in the morning to Mount Sinjar, where thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority fled to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters, the official said.