After August 2014, ISIL held the town of Sinjar. Several thousand Yazidis remained in the Sinjar Mountains located to the city's north, sustained by airdrops from a lone Iraqi helicopter, while an escape road from the mountains northward to Kurdish areas was under Kurdish/Yazidi control. American officials said that some of those Yazidis considered the Sinjar Mountains a place of refuge and home and did not want to leave; while a report from The New Yorker said some were afraid to return to their homes. Other Yazidis also came to the mountains after the August evacuations.
