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 British court has ordered three Sikh men to pay 500 pounds each ($832) to a fellow Sikh for a vicious attack near a Sikh temple in the British West Midlands county of Warwickshire, media reported Tuesday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that the ongoing Ukraine crisis must be settled via negotiations with representatives of the country's Russian-speaking regions and international mediators.
Sikh groups in Britain have urged the community to boycott the annual Downing Street Baisakhi reception by the British prime minister this month to protest against the findings of the government's probe into Operation Bluestar in Amritsar city's Golden Temple in 1984.
An Australian ship detected two more underwater signals in the southern Indian Ocean, possibly from an airplane black box, in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, an Australian official said Monday.
