The self-styled Islamic State group has freed more than 200 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority it held captive for months, according to a commander in the Kurdish peshmerga security forces.
"We have received 227 Yazidis, among them women and children" in the northern province of Kirkuk, Major General Westa Rasul said.
"We negotiated for days with tribal sheikhs in Hawijah and were able to free the kidnapped Yazidis," Mr Rasul said, referring to a town in Kirkuk under IS control.
The Yazidis were freed on Monday in Nineveh province, northwest of Kirkuk, but did not make their way to a Kurdish-controlled territory until two days later, he said.
The mass release of the Yazidis, who were kidnapped in Nineveh last year, is the second of its kind, after about 200 mainly elderly people were set free in January.
A sweeping IS offensive overran large areas north and west of Baghdad last June.
A second drive in August targeted areas in the north that were home to many of Iraq's minorities.
The Yazidis, who are neither Muslims nor Arabs, practice a unique faith and are considered infidels by the jihadists.
They were hit harder than others.
They looked in danger of being wiped out of their ancestral land until a US-led air campaign turned the tide on IS advances in northern Iraq.
The UN has said the IS campaign of killings, abductions and rape against Yazidis may amount to genocide.
