ISIS militants in northern Syria on Sunday released 19 Assyrian Christian hostages, according to the chief of a London-based activist group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman.
The group also said all but one of the hostages were among the at least 220 Assyrians captured on February 23 during an attack on villages in the northern Syrian province of Al-Hasakah.
The kidnappings took place shortly before dawn on 23 February, when IS militants raided about 12 villages, taking captive men, women and children from the villages, located on the southern bank of the Khabur river, near the town of Tal Tamr.
The Assyrian Human Rights Network said the captives gained their freedom after a Sharia court ordered them to pay an unspecified amount of money levied as a tax on non-Muslims.
Assyrian leaders and Sunni tribal Sheikhs tried to negotiate with IS to secure the release of the remaining captives, activists said.
While the “court” told the commander that the fate of the other kidnapped Assyrians has yet to be decided by ISIS Sharia jurists.
The reasoning behind the release was not immediately clear. It was also not clear why only 19 people were let go Sunday.
Assyrian Christian officials said that the 16 men and three women who were released arrived safely on Sunday at the Church of the Virgin Mary in the city of Hassakeh.
It is estimated that up to 40,000 Assyrians lived in Syria – alongside the overall Christian population of 1.2 million – before the country’s civil war broke out in 2011.
The Assyrians, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, had been under increasing pressure since ISIS captured large parts of the country.