President Barack Obama has ordered US warplanes back into the skies over Iraq to drop food to refugees and, if necessary, launch air strikes to halt what he says is a potential "genocide."
The US air armada's first mission was to drop food and water to thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority besieged by Sunni extremist fighters from the so-called Islamic State.
But Obama warned that he had also authorised the military to carry out targeted strikes in support of Iraqi forces to break the Islamists' advance or to protect US advisers working on the ground.
The president said US warplanes could also target Islamic State militants if they advance on the city of Arbil, where the US has a diplomatic presence and advisers to Iraqi forces.
"We plan to stand vigilant and take action if they threaten our facilities anywhere in Iraq, including the consulate in Arbil and embassy in Baghdad," he said late on Thursday.
"No air strikes have taken place at this time, but we remain postured to take targeted military action should the situation warrant it," a US official said in Washington.
A senior US defence official confirmed the mission had already dropped "critical meals and water for thousands of Iraqi citizens", Yazidis trapped in the open on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.
Obama said there were perhaps tens of thousands of civilian refugees, and he accused the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as ISIS and Islamic State) of attempting "the systematic destruction of the entire people, which would constitute genocide".
The president admitted the US cannot act every time it sees injustice, but insisted: "We can act, carefully and responsibly to prevent a potential act of genocide.
"That's what we're doing on that mountain. I, therefore, authorised targeted air strikes if necessary to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege and protect the civilians trapped there," he added.
Despite this note of determination, Obama was at pains to assure war weary Americans that he - the president who withdrew US forces from Iraq - was not about to get "dragged into fighting another war.
"American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq," he promised.
Earlier, in New York, the United Nations Security Council urged world powers "to support the government and the people of Iraq and to do all it can to help alleviate the suffering of the population".
Iraqi ambassador Ali al-Hakim said the meeting focused on the need for urgent relief efforts to help civilians fleeing the violence, and denied reports that air strikes had also been carried out.
Separately, French President Francois Hollande's office said "France was available to support forces engaged in this battle".
Obama came to office determined to end US military involvement in Iraq and in his first term oversaw the withdrawal of the huge ground force deployed there since the 2003 American invasion.
But recent rapid gains by ISIL, a successor group to al-Qaeda's former Iraqi and Syrian operations, compelled him to send military advisers back to Baghdad to evaluate the situation.
The Sunni extremists, along with other Sunni factions, are at war with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's mainly Shi'ite government forces and with the peshmerga forces of the Kurdish autonomous region of the country.
In late June, ISIL proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling rebel-held areas of Syria and Iraq and seized the major city of Mosul. In recent days, it has seized towns formerly populated by Christians and Yazidis.
Iraqi religious leaders say Islamic State militants have forced 100,000 Iraqi Christians to flee and have occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts.
"Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants," Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, said.
Entirely Christian Qaraqosh lies between Mosul, the jihadists' main hub in Iraq, and Arbil, the Kurdish region's capital. It usually has a population of around 50,000.
Tal Kayf, the home of a significant Christian community as well as members of the Shabak Shi'ite minority, also emptied overnight.
Several thousand Yazidis, members of an ancient pre-Muslim religious minority, are stranded on high ground after being driven out of their home town of Sinjar by ISIL fighters.
ISIL boasted of its latest victories, declaring: "We are pleased to announce to the Islamic nation a new liberation in Nineveh province, teaching the secular Kurds a lesson."
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