International
Ako Rasheed / Reuters
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released more than 200 Yazidis on Wednesday after holding them for eight months, an Iraqi Kurdish security official said — the latest mass release of captives by the group.
Gen. Hiwa Abdullah, a peshmerga commander in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said most of the freed 216 prisoners are in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect. He said that about 40 children are among those released and the rest are elderly.
No reason was given for the release of the prisoners who were originally abducted from the area around Sinjar in the country's north. The handover took place in Himera, just southwest of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad.
The freed Yazidis were taken away by ambulances and buses to receive treatment and care.
Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled in August when ISIL captured Sinjar, near the border with Syria. But hundreds were taken captive by the group, with some Yazidi women forced into slavery, according to international rights groups and Iraqi officials.
In January, ISIL released some 200 Yazidi prisoners. At the time, Kurdish military officials said they believed the group released the prisoners because they were too much of a burden.
ISIL, targeted in U.S.-led airstrikes and by Iraqi ground forces, controls about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. The U.S. began airstrikes and humanitarian aid drops in Iraq on Aug. 8, partly in response to the Yazidi crisis.
The group views Yazidis and Shia Muslims as apostates deserving of death, and it has demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax. The group has killed hundreds of captive soldiers and tribal fighters who have risen up against it in Syria and Iraq and has publicized the killings in online photos and videos.
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