France says it has asked the UN Security Council for an emergency meeting over the advances of Islamic militants in Iraq, reports ABC News.
France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday France was "very deeply concerned by the ... seizure of Qaraqoush, Iraq's biggest Christian village, and by the intolerable abuses committed." He asked that the international community mobilizes itself against the threat and brings help.
Britain holds the Security Council presidency this month and its UN Mission tweeted that the council will hold closed consultations on Iraq Thursday after talks about the situation in central Africa.
The capture of Qaraqoush and at least four other nearby hamlets by the group that calls itself the Islamic State brings the militants to the very edge of Iraqi Kurdish territory and its regional capital, Irbil. Witnesses say tens of thousands of civilians and Kurdish fighters have fled.
Fabius said it is the civilian population and the religious minorities that are the worst hit.
The Islamic State group seized large chunks of northern and western Iraq in a blitz offensive in June, including Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul.
Read more of this AP report published by ABC News.