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.
Malaysia announced Wednesday that 122 objects have been identified in new satellite imagery that might be connected to the ongoing search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 now declared “lost”.
North Korea fired off two medium-range ballistic missiles Wednesday morning in violation of the UN Security Council resolutions, South Korea's defence ministry said.
The search for the Malaysian airliner "lost" in the Indian Ocean will resume Wednesday, Australian authorities said Tuesday while Prime Minister Tony Abbott clarified the operation has now moved from search to recovery and investigative phase.
Escalating tension over Russia's annexation of Crimea, seven Western powers ousted Moscow from the G-8 and moved to shift the group's planned June summit in Sochi to a G7 meeting in Brussels.
Japan will hand over "hundreds of kilograms of sensitive nuclear material" to the US for destruction as part of the efforts to "help prevent unauthorised actors, criminals, or terrorists from acquiring such materials," the White House said Monday.
