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.
CAIRO — An Egyptian appeals court ordered a retrial Thursday in the case of three Al-Jazeera English journalists held for over a year, overturning the ruling in a case that ensnared the reporters in a wider conflict between Egypt and Qatar.
A 29-year-old US woman was accidentally shot dead at a WalMart store in Idaho when her two-year-old son, seated in the shopping cart, grabbed a gun that was in her purse.
In its first big strike against technical support scamming companies, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in the central district of California against Omnitech Support and related entities for unfair and deceptive business practices and trademark infringement
AirAsia Tuesday confirmed that the debris spotted in the Java Sea, is from the missing flight QZ8501, even as three bodies confirmed to be those of passengers in the ill-fated plane were retrieved.
The Islamabad High Court Monday ordered conditional release of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack, drawing strong protests from India, which summoned the Pakistani envoy to "convey concern" over the development.
No significant sign has been found after the second day's search for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 Monday, a senior official of Indonesia's seacrh and rescue agency said while another official dismally said the plane might well be at the bottom of the sea.
