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 American Sikh man reported missing earlier this week in the central Mexican state of Morelos has been found dead, an official in the town of Tepoztlan told Efe news agency.
Twenty US states as well as Washington, DC, have hiked their minimum wages as new laws came into force at the beginning of 2015, and now 29 of its 50 states have a minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
The AirAsia flight QZ8501 that met with disaster over the Java Sea on its way from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore Sunday, may have made a safe landing on water before being consumed by high waves, amid a raging storm, experts say.
Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was sent to 14 days' judicial custody in an abduction case by a court here Thursday, even as Pakistan termed "unfortunate" the "unnecessary hype" created by India over the issue and also questioned lack of action in the Samjhauta blast case
Another body from the victims of the crashed AirAsia plane in the Java Sea was recovered Thursday, taking the total number of bodies found till now to eight but bad weather continued to hamper the search operation.
