WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the Islamic militants’ siege of 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. 
 
 Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters Wednesday night at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., said it was “far less likely now” that the United States would undertake a rescue mission because the assessment team reported far fewer Yazidis on the mountain than expected, and that those still there were in relatively good condition. 
 
 Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, credited American airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops as well as efforts of the Kurdish pesh merga fighters in allowing “thousands of Yazidis to evacuate from the mountain each night over the last several days” and to escape the militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ||||| EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Crediting U.S. airstrikes and humanitarian aid, the Obama administration said Wednesday many trapped Iraqis have fled a mountain where they had sought refuge from militants, making it less likely the military would have to carry out a potentially dangerous rescue mission. 
 
 Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting, Ben Rhodes, speaks during a news briefing in Edgartown, Mass., on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Wednesday, Aug. 13,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting, Ben Rhodes, speaks during a news briefing in Edgartown, Mass., on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Wednesday, Aug. 13,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tornados surveillance aircrafts come in to land at the British Royal Air Force Base at Akrotiri, near the southern port city of Limassol, Cyprus, on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. British Bases spokesperson... (Associated Press) 
 
 The assessment came after U.S. troops secretly scouted Sinjar Mountain Wednesday, revealing far fewer people than originally thought. 
 
 Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said six days of U.S. airstrikes against militant targets in the region gave many people an opportunity to get off the mountain. He also said the food and water supplies the U.S. airdropped to the refugees helped to sustain them during the ordeal. 
 
 U.S. officials said only several thousand refugees remained on the mountain, far lower than the tens of thousands that had been reported earlier. As a result, a rescue mission is "far less likely now," Hagel said Wednesday night, adding that those Iraqis who remained on the mountain were in relatively good condition. 
 
 President Barack Obama had been weighing a range of military options, including airlifts and humanitarian corridors, to rescue the refugees. Officials said Obama had not completely ruled out the possibility of a mission to rescue those remaining on the mountain, but agreed with Hagel's assessment that such steps were now less likely. 
 
 Obama had dispatched 129 troops to Iraq on Tuesday to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis and options for getting the people safely off the mountain. 
 
 That process was advanced Wednesday when a team of fewer than 20 U.S. troops was flown onto the mountain by Black Hawk helicopter for a firsthand look at rescue mission possibilities. They were safely extracted hours later. 
 
 A U.S. military -led rescue mission could have involved putting American troops on the ground. The White House insisted any such action would be strictly a humanitarian rescue and would not constitute a return to combat 2 1/2 years after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq. 
 
 While the U.S. has been dropping food and water to the refugees for several days, officials said they began considering a rescue mission because it was unsustainable to let thousands of people remain on the mountain. 
 
 "There needs to be a lasting solution that gets that population to a safe space where they can receive more permanent assistance," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters traveling with the president during his vacation on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard. 
 
 Thousands of Iraqi religious minorities sought refuge on Sinjar Mountain after militants from the Islamic State group swept through their village in northern Iraq. In addition to the humanitarian aid drops, the U.S. has conducted airstrikes against Islamic State targets, both to protect American personnel in the region and stop the militants from moving on the civilians again. 
 
 On Wednesday, a U.S. drone aircraft attacked and destroyed an armed truck operated by Islamic militants near Sinjar, the U.S. Central Command said. 
 
 Obama has ruled out sending combat troops back into Iraq, where nearly 4,500 Americans were killed during the eight year war that ended in 2011. 
 
 The Pentagon said the U.S. would continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the displaced Iraqis as needed, as well as take steps to protect U.S. personnel and facilities in the region. 
 
 Some of the U.S. airstrikes have been aimed at keeping militants from advancing on Irbil, the capital of the largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region and home to a U.S. consulate. 
 
 The Pentagon said the assessment team was transported to Irbil by a small number of V-22 Osprey aircraft from an undisclosed location in the Middle East. 
 
 The assessment team joins 90 U.S. military advisers already in Baghdad and 160 in a pair of operations centers — one in Irbil and one in Baghdad, the central government's capital — working with Iraqi security forces. 
 
 They were in addition to about 455 U.S. security forces and 100 military personnel working in the Office of Security Cooperation in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. 
 
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 Burns reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Robert Burns at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP ||||| Iraqi Kurdish security forces have opened a road to Sinjar Mountain in northwestern Iraq, rescuing more than 5,000 Yazidis trapped there after running away from fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group, a Kurdish army spokesman has told Al Jazeera. 
 
 "I can confirm that we succeeded in reaching the mountains and opening a road for the refugees," said Halgord Hikmet, a spokesman for the Peshmergas, the Kurdish security forces. 
 
 Hikmet said that recent air strikes on IS targets by US warplanes had allowed the Peshmergas to open a route to the mountain. 
 
 The IS, which has captured large areas of Syria and Iraq, see Shia Muslims and minorities such as Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish ethno-religious community, as infidels. 
 
 The Yazidis, a minority that follow a 4,000-year-old faith, had taken cover in Sinjar Mountain for the past five days in searing heat, and with no supplies, after fleeing advancing IS fighters. 
 
 Two Kurdish officials, Ekrem Hasso and Juan Mohammad, told the AP news agency that the Yazidis fled across the border from Iraq to seek refuge with the Kurds of northeastern Syria. 
 
 Rami Abdel-Rahman, who heads the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said thousands of people have fled from Iraq into Syria but had no exact number. 
 
 US warplanes have launched several waves of air strikes against IS fighters in northern Iraq since Friday. 
 
 Aerial drones and F-18 jets have attacked fighter positions close to the Kurdish capital of Erbil. 
 
 The air strikes seek to allow the federal and Kurdish governments to claw back areas lost in two months of conflict. 
 
 On Friday and Saturday, the US also dropped food and water for the Yazidis hiding on Sinjar Mountain. The UK is also delivering aid and has announced it is sending medics to northern Iraq. 
 
 'US troops will not fight in Iraq' 
 
 Barack Obama, the US president, said at a news conference on Saturday that Washington was proud to be acting alongside friends and allies in Iraq during the air strikes and was in the process of reaching Iraqi civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain. 
 
 Obama repeatedly called on the Iraqis to come together to form a legitimate Iraqi government and overcome a political crisis that has been going on for months. 
 
 He also said that there was no particular timetable regarding the air strikes, adding that they would take place as long as it was necessary to protect Iraqi civilians and US citizens, diplomats and military advisers in Iraq. 
 
 Separately, in his weekly address earlier on Saturday, he said he would not allow the US to be dragged into another war in Iraq, making it clear that American combat troops will not return to fight there. 
 
 The air strikes are the first in the embattled country since Obama put an end to the US occupation in 2011 and come after the IS group made massive gains on the ground, seizing a major dam and forcing a mass exodus of religious minorities.
– It looks like the US won't have to launch a mass evacuation of Iraqis trapped on a mountain after all. A small team of American military personnel who spent 24 hours on Mount Sinjar said US airstrikes seem to have done the trick—most of the trapped Yazidis who wanted to flee to safety have done so, reports the New York Times. As a result, defense chief Chuck Hagel said a rescue mission is "far less likely now," reports the AP. Exact numbers weren't available, but CNN quotes a Pentagon spokesman as saying that "far fewer" Yazidis were on the mountain than expected. He estimated "several thousand" but said many wanted to stay there because their homes are nearby. Earlier, the US deployed 130 troops to Iraq, and President Obama said he would be willing to use those troops as part of a rescue mission.