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AFP West drops aid to Iraq town under jihadist siege

Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Western warplanes dropped desperately needed aid on Sunday to an Iraqi Shiite town under blockade by jihadists for well over two months as preparations to break the siege dragged on.

The aid drops were accompanied by US air strikes and were the furthest south that US forces have intervened in Iraq, barring reconnaissance flights, since their withdrawal in December 2011.

The mainly Turkmen residents of the Salaheddin province town of Amerli, where the United Nations has warned of the risk of sectarian massacre by the besieging Sunni Arab extremists, have been running desperately short of food and medicines.

Thousands of Shiite militiamen and Kurdish fighters have been massing for days for an operation to break the siege, alongside the Iraqi army, which was left in disarray by the lightning offensive the jihadists launched in second city Mosul in early June.

Washington launched air strikes in support of Kurdish forces in northern Iraq on August 8.

But it has so far been reluctant to expand its operations amid Pentagon warnings that military intervention alongside Baghdad government forces risks further alienating Sunni Arabs without more strenuous efforts by the Shiite-led administration to engage the disenchanted minority community.

Shiite militia and Kurdish forces closed on the besieged enclave on Sunday, reaching within five kilometres (three miles) of the forces inside it, militia commander Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati said.

A roadside bomb south of the town killed four militiamen, officers said.

Australian, British, French and US aircraft dropped relief supplies to the thousands of civilians trapped in the enclave.

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Iraq launches drive to break jihadist siege of Amerli