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.
"Unfreedom", a new Indian film banned in filmmaker Raj Amit Kumar's native India, will be released in North American theatres and simultaneously on digital channels via Film Buff on May 29.
An Indian national was temporarily paralysed and hospitalised with fused vertebrae after police in the US state of Alabama roughed him up last week when he was walking on the sidewalk outside his son's home, media reported.
An Indian national in Singapore was sentenced to 10 months in jail and ordered to be given three cane strokes Monday for molesting a woman on New Year's Day this year, media reported.
The militants of Sunni radical group Islamic State (IS) over the past few days have been looting and destroying ancient religious sites in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a government official said Sunday.
