Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, settle in abandoned houses as they take shelter in Mount Sinjar August 13, 2014.
Two US officials say that roughly 4,500 people remain atop northern Iraq's Sinjar Mountain, and nearly half are herders who lived there before the siege and have no interest in being evacuated.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorised to speak publicly, said a US team who spent yesterday on the mountaintop reported numbers far smaller and circumstances less dire than feared.
The Obama administration had been contemplating a military-led rescue of civilians who fled to the mountain to escape Islamic militants. But it had been unclear how many people might need evacuation. Some had reported them to number in the tens of thousands.
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has said yesterday that it was "far less likely" now that a rescue mission would be needed.