The Islamic State group has freed around 350 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority, delivering them to safety in the country's Kurdish north.
Almost all those released were elderly, disabled or unwell, and included several infants with serious illnesses, according to a Reuters reporter who saw them arrive in the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk.
IS militants attacked Yazidis in northwestern Iraq last summer, killing or capturing and enslaving thousands of the minority group.
Those who could fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region, where many are living in camps along with other religious and ethnic minorities, as well as Sunni Muslims displaced by the Islamist militants.
One of the freed Yazidis, who was in his 70s, said IS fighters had ordered them to get onto buses and they feared they were going to be executed.
Instead, they were driven to the IS-controlled Shirqat area, where they spent the night, and from there to Hawija at the southwestern entrance of Kirkuk.
Kurdish peshmerga forces drove back IS militants in northwestern Iraq last month.
That broke a long siege of Mount Sinjar where thousands of Yazidis had been stranded for months. But many Yazidi villages remain under IS control.
Yazidi beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. IS fighters say the Yazidi must embrace their radical version of Islam or die.
