Maliki becomes even more isolated
Maliki’s Dawa Party has called on Iraqi politicians to work with his new prime minister-designate Abadi to form a new government, according to Reuters.
In a statement yesterday, the Dawa Party said it "called on political blocs to cooperate with the constitutionally designated prime minister, Mr. Abadi, and accelerate the formation of a government in the defined time period."
Maliki has refused to stand aside.
Camps set up for displaced
Thousands of people have poured into camps in the autonomous Kurdistan region. The UN as well as a number of countries are trying to set up a number of camps to meet rising demand.
Meanwhile, IS militants remain just outside of Irbil, the capital of autonomous Kurdistan region.
UN says humanitarian crisis at its highest level
The UN, however, sees a different picture to the one presented by U.S. officials.
UN special representative Nickolay Mladenov said yesterday that declaring Iraq a "Level 3 Emergency" will release additional goods and funds to help tens of thousands of people displaced by the IS.
Mladenov said Iraq was given the most serious level "given the scale and complexity of the current humanitarian catastrophe."
Mladenov said tens of thousands of people are reportedly still trapped on Sinjar Mountain "with health conditions quickly deteriorating." He said the situation in Dahuk, where more than 200,000 displaced Iraqis have fled, is also of "grave concern."
Iraq is the UN's fourth Level 3 humanitarian emergency, joining Syria, South Sudan and Central African Republic.
U.S. Rescue Mission Unlikely
The U.S. has said a rescue mission of displaced people from Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq is unlikely after determining there are fewer people stranded there than previously thought.
The Pentagon said in a statement that U.S. officials who visited the mountain on August 13 said the several thousand people living there are in relatively good condition.
It was previously thought that there were tens of thousands of minority Yezidis and Christians on the mountain.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel credited airdrops of water and food of sustaining those on Mount Sinjar and said U.S. air strikes had pushed back Islamic State militants, allowing thousands to escape the mountain.
The United States had been considering a rescue mission on the mountain in the belief that their situation was dire.
Hagel said U.S. military and relief efforts will continue.
Welcome back to our live coverage of all the day's developments in Iraq.
That concludes our live-blogging for today, Wednesday August 13. We will be back at 9:00 a.m. (Prague time) tomorrow. In the meantime, you can follow all our Iraq coverage here.