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.
The last time this happened was 37 years ago when citizens' groups stood guard outside the rooms where the boxes containing the ballots cast in the 1977 general election - after the emergency was lifted - were stored.
About 50 people, including a senior police officer and two media persons, were injured in a communal clash in Meerut Saturday, police said. The incident occurred around 2 p.m. in Teer Gehran area when a group of people was installing a water facilitation kiosk near a mosque.
An Indian-American Bollywood concert promoter in California has been convicted of aggravated mayhem for paying three men to maim his ex-wife last year, leaving her with permanent facial injuries.
The British teenaged girl who attacked an 80-year-old Sikh pensioner in a city centre in Britain's Coventry last year has been jailed for two years by the Warwick crown court.
Taking on Congress president Sonia Gandhi for calling him a person of "low thought", BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi Friday accused her of "stooping low" due to impending defeat in the general elections.
A seven-foot tall bronze statue of India's freedom movement leader will be the centrepiece of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial of North Texas with walls inscribed with some of his quotes.
