IS jihadists free 200 elderly Yazidis in north Iraq

The Islamic State (IS) group released more than 200 mostly elderly members of northern Iraq's Yazidi minority who had been held for months, officials and activists said.
The Yazidis were freed yesterday on the front line southwest of the city of Kirkuk and met by Kurdish peshmerga forces who brought them to a health centre in Altun Kopri, on the road to the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil.
"These men and women had been held in Mosul," Khodr Domli, a leading Yazidi rights activist told AFP at the centre. "We already have names for 196 and there could be some more."

"Some are wounded, some have disabilities and many are suffering from mental and psychological problems," he said.
According to officials from Kirkuk and Arbil, the group was moved from Mosul via Hawija and freed at the Khaled entrance to Kirkuk yesterday.
Dozens of Kurdish doctors and nurses provided emergency care at the Altun Kopri health centre, where Yazidis who had heard the news started to mass at the gates, hoping to be reunited with missing relatives.

"We have dispatched laboratory teams to check their blood, to control for things such as polio and possible contagious diseases," said Saman Barzanji, director general of the Arbil health department.

"Another team is here to handle the people's immediate health needs. We have also deployed ambulance teams to dispatch emergency cases to hospital," he said.
Those freed, some in wheelchairs, others leaning on walking sticks, looked tired and distraught as they waited to give blood samples.
One of them told how they had been moved from one place to another in northern Iraq since being captured in early August.
"It was so hard, not only because of the lack of food but also because I spent so much time worrying," said an old Yazidi man in a rickety wheelchair, wearing a red and white headscarf.