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Islamic State releases about 200 Yazidi captives in Iraq

Xinhua, January 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Islamic State (IS) militant group released about 200 elderly members of Iraqi Yazidi religious minority Saturday in northern Iraq, a Kurdish source said.

A local source told Xinhua that about 200 elderly members of Iraqi Yazidi religious minority who had been held for months were released by IS in southwest of the city of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad.

The source added that these people were housed in a health center in northern Kirkuk, and "many doctors and volunteers come to provide medical care in the center."

Early in August, IS captured the town of Sinjar, killed and kidnapped hundreds of Yazidis.

The security situation in Iraq began to drastically deteriorate on June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, an al-Qaida offshoot, who took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other predominantly Sunni provinces. Endi