The Islamic State (IS) militant group has freed around 350 members of the Yazidi religious community in northern Iraq.
The group of mainly elderly Yazidis crossed out of IS-controlled territory and were received by Kurdish officials near the city of Kirkuk. It is not yet clear why militants released them.
IS attacked the Yazidi minority community in Iraq last year, killing and abducting thousands of people. The groups, including several sick infants, were taken directly by Kurdish Peshmerga forces to a health centre for treatment.
Khodr Domli, a leading Yazidi rights activist, was at the centre. “Some are wounded, some have disabilities and many are suffering from mental and psychological problems,” he told a foreign news agency.
“These men and women had been held in Mosul,” he added.
One elderly Yezidi among those released said some of them feared they would be executed when the militants ordered them onto buses.
Note that they have released only the old and the infirm..not the girls who were taken as slaves for sexual exploitation and under the authority of religious sanction.
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