The Islamic State group yesterday released at least 200 Yazidis after five months of captivity in Iraq. The prisoners were mainly elderly persons who may have been slowing the extremists down.

Peshmerga General Shirko Fatih, commander of Kurdish forces in the northern city of Kirkuk, said almost all of the freed prisoners were clearly in poor health and many others bore signs of abuse and neglect. They included three young children.

The militants transported the captives from the northern town of Tal Afar, where they had been held for the past five months after the militants raided their towns last summer.

They dropped the captives off at the Khazer Bridge, near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil.

General Fatih said the freed captives are now being held by Kurdish authorities for questioning.

He said it appears that the Islamic State militants decided to release the prisoners because they had become too much of a burden, saying “It probably became too expensive to feed them and care for them.”

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled in August when the Islamic State captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border.

It probably became too expensive for the militants to feed the prisoners and care for them

However, hundreds were taken captive, particularly women.

Iraqi and international authorities later said that some Yazidi women had been sold into slavery.

About 50,000 Yazidis – half of them children, according to United Nations figures – fled to the mountains outside Sinjar during the onslaught.

Some still remain there, afraid to return because of the Islamic takeover.

The Sunni militants who comprise the Islamic State group view Yazidis and Shiite Muslims as apostates, and have demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax.

They have also killed large numbers of prisoners from the two groups.

The Islamic State group currently holds a third of both Iraq and Syria.

It is being targeted by US-led air strikes in an effort to stop it from spreading any further.