IS releases 25 kidnapped Kurdish students in northern Syria

The Islamic State (IS) militant group released 25 Kurdish students it had snatched in Syria's northern province of Aleppo last May, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

It said the released school children were part of 150 Kurdish students captured by the IS fighters late last May in the town of Manbej in Aleppo after finishing their exams, adding that the IS had released tens of the kidnapped students before and kept others in captivity under the pretext that their relatives are members of the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD).

The kidnapped students are from the predominantly Kurdish city of Ayn al-Arab, or known as Kobane, where intense battles have been raging since over a month ago between the IS fighters and the Kurdish militants.

The Observatory spelled no details on the reasons behind the release of the kidnapped students.

The IS unleashed its wide-scale offensive against Ayn al-Arab on Sept. 15 in a bid to capture the city, which would enable the IS to link its self-declared capital of al-Raqqa province with the Kurdish town and stretch its territory to areas bordering Turkey.

The IS has captured more than 300 villages around the city and managed to storm parts of it after forcing over 160,000 people to flee toward neighboring Turkey. Enditem