(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 their towns in northern iraq last summer, officials said most of those released were women and children; the rest were ill or elderly, said rassol omar, a commander in the peshmerga force that defends  northern iraq's semi autonomous kurdish region omar didn't say what led to the release, other than asserting that arab tribal leaders helped to coordinate it the freed yazidis were received by peshmerga, who sent them to the kurdish regional capital, irbil, said nuri osman, an official with iraq's kurdistan regional government it wasn't immediately clear what motivated wednesday's release, osman said osman said 217 yazidis were released omar, the peshmerga commander, had a higher count: 228 isis previously released scores of other yazidislargely children and the elderlysince attacking the group's towns last year the sunni islamist militant group steamrolled into iraq's north last summer, forcing hundreds of thousands of minoritiesyazidis among themfrom their homes yazidis are of kurdish descent, and their religion is considered a pre islamic sect that draws from christianity, judaism and zoroastrianism one of the oldest religious communities in the world, the yazidis have long suffered persecution, with many muslims referring to them as devil worshipers isis' cruelty to them has been extraordinary isis' conquest of the town of sinjar, in particular, provoked a major humanitarian crisis as some yazidis fled into the mountainswhere many became trapped for a time without food and waterand others fled by foot into neighboring syria isis slaughtered yazidis by the hundreds, yian dakhil, the only lawmaker representing the yazidis in iraq's parliament, told cnn last year reports emerged from some yazidi survivors that isis raped and enslaved female yazidi captives an international coalition responded, first by airdropping supplies in the mountains rescues came next and then, starting in august, the united states and other nations conducted airstrikes targeting isis in iraq and syria the us state department estimates that 500,000 yazidis live in northern iraq, accounting for less than 1% of the country's population cnn's raja razek reported from beirut cnn's jason hanna wrote from atlanta cnn's hamdi alkshali, faith karimi and yousuf basil contributed to this report
kurdish freed yazidis iraq
most of those released were women and children  freed yazidis sent to capital of iraq's kurdish region 