In a rare prisoner swap, a hard-line Syrian rebel group has released 25 women and children to Syrian government fighters in exchange for one of their captive commanders, a monitoring group said on Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 10 children and 15 women were kidnapped by the Sunni insurgents more than a year ago from two Shia-majority towns in northern Aleppo province.
The deal was between the Jaish al-Mujahideen faction, a self-described Islamist coalition that fights both the Syrian regime and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and pro-government militia, the Observatory said. Kurdish fighters known as Popular Protection Units (YPG) reportedly mediated the swap.
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