19 hostages freed from ISIS control

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian troops have liberated 19 women and children hostages held by the Islamic State group since July in a military operation in the country’s center, ending a monthslong crisis that has stunned Syria’s Druze religious minority, state media reported Thursday. An opposition war monitor said the release was part of an exchange.

The Syrian Arab News Agency said in its report that the operation occurred in the Hamima area east of the historic town of Palmyra. It said all Islamic State fighters in the area where the hostages were held have been killed.

The Suwayda 24 activist collective quoted local officials as saying the women and children held by the Islamic State have all been freed.

The 19 women and children were among 30 people kidnapped by the Islamic State in the southern province of Sweida on July 25 when militants of the extremist group ambushed residents and went on a killing spree that left at least 216 people dead.

The rare attacks in Sweida province, populated mainly by Syria’s minority Druze, came amid a government offensive elsewhere in the country’s south. The coordinated attacks across the province, which included several suicide bombings, shattered the calm of a region that had been largely spared from the worst of the violence of Syria’s seven-year-long civil war.

A Syrian opposition war monitor contradicted the reports on state media, saying the Islamic State set free the hostages in return for the government’s release of women related to militant fighters and commanders who were held by Syrian authorities, as well as a monetary payment.