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.
A heavy piece of gold, found years ago in Venezuela, has now been identified as the world’s largest single crystal of gold. Worth an estimated $1.5 million (about Rs.9 crore), the rare lump of gold weighs 217.78 grams and is the size of a golf ball.
The Crimean parliament Friday voted unanimously in favour of a new constitution that proclaims it a legal and democratic state within the Russian Federation.
The world’s largest ever swarm of genetically modified mosquitoes has been released in a Brazilian town to combat dengue -- a leading cause of illness and fatality in the South American country, the media reported Friday.
With close to one-third of the world's extreme poor concentrated in India and another one-third in four more countries, a sharp focus on them will be central to ending extreme poverty, says a new World Bank paper.
A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion aircraft has detected a possible signal consistant with the missing jet in the vicinity of the Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield, an official confirmed Thursday.
NATO cites "increasing militarisation of Russia" to prove that the bloc is still needed in the 21st century, Xinhua quoted the Russian foreign ministry as saying in a statement.
