IRAQ. Flying over the Iraq-Syria border. August 12, 2014. A wounded survivor of an Iraqi airforce helicopter crash holds on inside a second rescue helicopter. The man was an Iraqi Kurdish volunteer who had boarded the first helicopter to aid Iraqi and Kurdish forces in a rescue mission of Yazidi civilians trapped in Mount Sinjar. The civilians were fleeing religious persecution at the hands of Islamist extremists who had recently taken over their hometowns. Thousands of Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar, where they were safe from ISIS but at risk of dying from hunger and thirst. The second helicopter, pictured here, airlifted the survivors to Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan.