AUGUST 12 (Reuters) — Islamic State has released 22 of the dozens of Assyrian Christians it abducted from villages in north-eastern Syria earlier this year, a monitoring group said on Tuesday (August 11).
The elderly people were taken to Khabur where they were looked after in the local church.
It was not clear how many Assyrians remain in the hands of the ultra-hardline Islamist militants, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they continued to hold more than 150.
The group seized more than 200 Assyrians in February when its fighters overran more than a dozen villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority near Hasaka, a north-eastern city mainly inhabited by Kurds.
The head of a Syrian Assyrian group in Sweden confirmed the release and said all of the freed captives were elderly men and women.
In March, the group released 19 of the captives.
