article_snippet.sent: (CNN)ISIS on Wednesday released more than 200 Yazidis, a minority group whose members were killed, captured and displaced when the Islamist terror organization overtook more than 200 Yazidis, a minority group whose members were killed towns in northern Iraq last summer, officials said.
article_snippet.sent: Freed Yazidis were received by Peshmerga, who sent Freed Yazidis to the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil, said Osman.
article_snippet.sent: Osman said Freed Yazidis were released.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS previously released scores of other Yazidis -- largely children and the elderly -- since attacking the group's towns last year.
article_snippet.sent: the group steamrolled into Iraq's north last summer, forcing hundreds of thousands of minorities -- Yazidis among the group -- from hundreds of thousands of minorities --
article_snippet.sent: Yazidis among them -- homes.
article_snippet.sent: Yazidis are of Kurdish descent, and Yazidis religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
article_snippet.sent: One of the oldest religious communities in the world, the Yazidis have long suffered persecution, with many Muslims referring to the Yazidis as devil worshipers.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS cruelty to the Yazidis has been extraordinary.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS conquest of the town of Sinjar, in particular, provoked a major humanitarian crisis as some Yazidis fled into the mountains -- where many became trapped for a time without food and water -- and others fled by foot into neighboring Syria.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS slaughtered Yazidis by the hundreds, Yian Dakhil, the only lawmaker representing the Yazidis in Iraq's Parliament, told CNN last year.
article_snippet.sent: Reports emerged from some Yazidi survivors that ISIS raped and enslaved female Yazidi captives.
article_snippet.sent: The U.S. State Department estimates that 500,000 Yazidis live in IraqIraq, accounting for less than 1% of the country's population.
highlights_snippet.sent: Freed Yazidis sent to capital of Iraq's Kurdish region .