The Islamic State (IS) militants on Sunday released 19 Christian Assyrians they had kidnapped last month, a monitoring group reported.
The 19 people are the first batch of 29 Assyrians the sharia court of the IS exonerated on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, Xinhua reported.
On February 23, the IS abducted 220 Christian Assyrians during an assault it had waged on predominantly Assyrian areas, mainly in the area of Tal Tamr and its countryside in Syria's northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
The fate of the other abductees is still unknown amid reports that the rest of the Assyrians are awaiting trials in the IS courts.
There is no clear reason why would the IS even put the Assyrians on trial.
Also on Sunday, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the Syrian troops captured as many as 33 towns in the eastern countryside of Hasaka after clashes with the IS.
An entrepreneur in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched a campaign to promote goodwill between expatriates from India and Pakistan, a UAE daily reported.
More than 1,300 African migrants Tuesday tried to enter Spain illegally by sea and land in one of the biggest rushes for a better life in Europe in nearly a decade.
A new report by Amnesty International says the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians, killed in airstrikes and night raids by NATO forces, have gone uninvestigated and unpunished.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview published Sunday, blamed President Barack Obama's faulty foreign policy for the rise of Islamic militants in both Syria and Iraq....
Israel and the Hamas militant group accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal Sunday, clearing the way for the resumption of talks on a long-term truce to end a month...
