Three of the six people, kidnapped by Islamic State, set free: Source

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Three of the six Iraqi people abducted by Islamic State, earlier this week, has been freed in return for ransom, a security source was quoted saying on Tuesday.

“Three of the kidnapped people has been released in return for ransom,” the source told Baghdad Today website. “Security troops received the released ones in a desert region, north of Salahuddin.”

The three abductees, according to the source, who preferred anonymity, “were there yesterday at the headquarters of Diyala Operations Command.”

The militant group announced through some videos posted on its propaganda websites that seventeen people were kidnapped on the road between Kirkuk and Baghdad. Among those people, where the six men who appeared in the video, released earlier this week.

Late on Monday, the Iraqi Joint Operations Command denied liberating the six people abducted by Islamic State. This came few hours after news reports quoted sources from the Interior Ministry as saying that troops managed to liberate the six abductees in Kirkuk.

The militant group made the threat, on Sunday, in a video it released on its Amaq propaganda agency, showing six men, with their faces covered in bruises. The detainees were members of the Iraqi police and al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), who were kidnapped last week on a road linking Baghdad to Kirkuk.