Report: ISIS Captures Iraq's Largest Dam; U.S. Drops 500-Pound Bombs Over Iraq; Hundreds Hide From ISIS In A Church; New Round Of Air Strikes In Iraq
BALDWIN: In Iraq, an estimated 200,000 people have run for their lives in the last 48 hours. They are fearful that ISIS militants might behead them for religious beliefs. Remember? They have the choice. Convert or die. Families are worried that their young children might be captured or worse, tortured. They have left their homes on a moment's notice. ISIS seized Iraq's largest Christian town yesterday, setting off just a total panic. All these crowds fled to the Iraqi city of Irbil trying to seek refuge. And it's not just Christians being targeted here, but any religious minority who does not follow ISIS' strict version of Islam. Here's much more from Irbil is senior international correspondent, Ivan Watson.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are on the run right now and hundreds of them have taken shelter here in a place of worship. This is St. Joseph's Church. It's in the Christian town in the Northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. This is where hundreds of people have been sleeping for the past two nights after running for their lives. Christian leaders in Iraq are warning of the threat of genocide against this ancient Christian community and it's not just the Christians who are under threat, basically any religious or ethnic minority that includes Yazidis, Shiite Muslims, they are all on the run right now. Terrified of this strict and very violent interpretation of Islam implemented by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS. And this is the situation right now. Women like this, her family, have slept for the second night in this church with their 40-day-old baby right here. And sadly, this is probably just the very beginning of this humanitarian crisis. Now we're in an unfinished building, basically a construction site where some of the displaced Iraqi Christians have taken shelter. I met a young man. This is 22-year-old Andros, who you fled your house two days ago. Can you tell me, what was the scene like when you ran away?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. I'm just too scared. There was thousand cars. Sorry. Thousand car. And we -- my father drove the car for six hours, three hours in the dust and three hours in the road. When we were in the dust, we couldn't see anything. Just cars running away. We didn't know where we were going. So I don't know.</s>WATSON: And you were running from ISIS from the Islamic State.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, Islamic state. They are monsters. Monsters are better.</s>WATSON: Do you think you can never go home?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think so.</s>BALDWIN: Ivan Watson joins us now live from Irbil and the notion of never going home and too in that church seeing that 40-day-old baby. It's wrong. Every way around.</s>WATSON: Yes, this is a humanitarian crisis. There's no other word for it because we're just seeing a little piece of it right now. The Kurdish leadership telling me perhaps there's more than half a million people across this region all forced out of their homes and all of them left really on a moment's notice. So there's no real network set up to take care of these people especially at a time when the Kurds are fighting the ISIS militants at the same time. I do have to say that it sounds like the Kurds are breathing a sigh of relief since the U.S. began some air strikes against suspected ISIS targets. Particularly here in Irbil where the militants had advanced to within 30 miles of the city that I'm standing in right now. There was real fear here. There were Peshmerga units that according to some people I've talked to were simply melting away, fleeing from the frontlines. And since President Obama issued his warning not to attack Irbil, the fighting had calmed down for about 24 hours giving the Peshmerga militia of the Kurds time to regroup and reset their defenses and try to protect this what has become basically a Kurdish safe haven from the Islamist militants -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Maybe more sighs of relief on the way. We're just now learning, breaking news, Ivan Watson, thank you. Breaking news, we are learning about a second round of U.S. air strikes on Iraq. Barbara Starr is joining me now. Barbara Starr, what do you know?</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Brook, this information just coming into CNN right now. There have been two additional rounds of U.S. military air strikes against ISIS in Northern Iraq. Everybody bear with me. I'm going to detail it for everyone the information just coming into us. Shortly after 10:00 this morning Eastern Time, a U.S. military drone, a remote piloted vehicle, struck at an ISIS mortar position. They hit that position and then they tell us when the ISIS fighters shortly thereafter returned to the site. They were attacks again at that site by the U.S. military and that site we are told was destroyed. This is all, of course, just outside of Irbil. So the first strike 10:00 this morning. A U.S. military remote piloted vehicle, generally they carry hell fire missiles. They are very precise echoing against very particular targets. They hit an ISIS mortar position. That was at 10:00 this morning. An hour and 20 minutes later, 11:20 this morning east coast time, four FA-18 aircraft we believe all off the deck of the carrier, George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf flew over Iraq and struck at a stationary convoy of seven ISIS vehicles. So there were seven ISIS vehicles at a stationary or still position and a mortar position, with them near Irbil. These four aircrafts made two passes over the target on both runs, each of the aircraft dropped one laser-guided bomb essentially there were a total of eight bombs dropped by the U.S. FA-18s on this mortar position and the convoy of seven vehicles. So we've had three strikes in less than the last 24 hours against ISIS targets in the Irbil area in Northern Iraq. The president's justification for these reasoning behind these strikes continues to be the protection in Irbil of U.S. military and diplomatic personnel as ISIS continues its advance on that Northern Iraqi City -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: OK, Barbara Starr with the news, stay with me. Let me just bring in Colonel Rick Francona, who is on the phone with me. To emphasize Barbara's point, three strikes in less than 24 hours, Colonel, mortar precision, stationary convoy of vehicles. Before that, it was the artillery targets. Tell me what the U.S. specifically is going after?</s>FRANCONA (via telephone): Anything that composes a threat to Irbil, anything that composes a threat to the consulate or U.S. forces working in that joint command center in Northern Iraq. So it looks like they are looking for targets of opportunity if they see anything that's in that general area that has an offensive capability, they're going to go ahead and strike it rather than wait for ISIS to make a move, they'll try to set up a safe cordon there. Anything in that area, they're going to strike.</s>BALDWIN: What about the damage that would be done? We're obviously not there on the ground, but hoping to damage all of this completely.</s>FRANCONA: You know, each one of these aircraft, the way she described is if they made two passes and dropped one bomb on each. They're guiding each one with a laser. They can take their time. If they're high enough they're not worried about air defense. They can make sure that they hit the targets and coordinate with each other what they're going to strike. They'll probably hit all eight targets very effectively.</s>BALDWIN: OK. Barbara Starr, you want to jump back in?</s>STARR: I do want to just to remind I think what most Americans already know. These kinds of operations are extremely dangerous. The U.S. military takes all the precautions to keep its air crew safe. They try and fly out of the range of surface-to-air missiles that might attack them. But look, we are now putting manned aircraft, U.S. military pilots, U.S. air crews over what is enemy territory, ISIS territory. There can be aircraft failures. There can be mechanical failures. This is very dangerous business. There are U.S. pilots at risk, well worth remembering each and every day as they are out there now on these missions --Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Again as we talked about the areas outside of Irbil, just to remind our viewers, we're talking about an area of the U.S. Consulate. There we go. You see the town of Irbil in Northern Iraq. And we have what, Barbara, about 40 Americans, delegates there stationed. Go ahead.</s>STARR: There's about 40 U.S. military advisors trying to help the Iraqi forces. They went up there several weeks ago thinking Irbil would be one of the safest places for them to be. U.S. diplomats who left the embassy in Baghdad to the south went there thinking it would be much more secure. This is a Kurdish area that, you know, the Kurds had had pretty good control over for quite some time. What is perhaps in front of everybody's face somewhat surprising still I think is how fast this is unfolding. And that the ISIS fighters have been able to make such rapid moves on places like Irbil. Really putting the Kurdish fighters, you know, on high alert and really struggling to push back. The Kurdish fighters haven't really been able to push ISIS back. The Iraqi Air Force that the U.S. funded to a large extent has been doing some air strikes to push them back. But we're talking about the possibility of pushing it ISIS back just a little bit. We're not even talking about retaking territory. These are militants that act as an army, fight like an army, have strategic objectives and right now, they appear to be on the march and meeting those objectives -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: To your point, the Kurdish forces Peshmerga no match for ISIS. Let me go back to Irbil, Iraq, to Ivan Watson. What is the reaction among the Kurds to this second round of air strikes?</s>WATSON: I lost you for a second there, Brook. But basically, there's been a lot of relief here among the Kurds who were -- their top officials were openly basically begging for the U.S. to intervene. Saying that this city, Irbil was very close to a catastrophe. That the ISIS militants were only about 30 miles away from the city of more than a million people, a city that's been inundated by hundreds of thousands of refugees in just the last 48 hours. A lot of Kurds now are starting to talk about how the U.S. basically protected this region for more than ten years with a no-fly zone up until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and perhaps we're starting to see a fresh version of that, version 2.0 today with the threat of the ISIS militants in 2014.</s>BALDWIN: OK.