On the evening of 7 August 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a live address to the nation. He described the recent ISIL advances across Iraq and said that ISIL's persecution and threatening the extinction of Yazidis, a religious minority in northern Iraq, including especially the Yazidis who had fled into the Sinjar Mountains, in particular had convinced him that U.S. military action was necessary. The President said that he had ordered airstrikes: