{"id":24482,"date":"2016-04-09T02:05:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T02:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/syria-war-isil-frees-majority-of-abducted-plant\/"},"modified":"2016-04-09T02:05:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T02:05:09","slug":"syria-war-isil-frees-majority-of-abducted-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/syria-war-isil-frees-majority-of-abducted-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria war: ISIL frees majority of abducted plant staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Workers at cement plant kidnapped earlier this week after ISIL launched attack on Syrian government forces near Dumayr.}<\/p>\n<p>The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has released most of the cement workers it kidnapped on Thursday, a monitoring group said.<\/p>\n<p>It was still unclear how many were being held and how many of the kidnapped Al-Badia cement factory workers were freed &#8211; sources told Al Jazeera  that the number was far less than 300 &#8211; but ISIL&#8217;s Amaq website said the armed group had released nearly 300 workers.<\/p>\n<p>It also said the group executed four workers for being from the Druze minority and would not release 20 men accused of belonging to a pro-government forces.<\/p>\n<p>Local officials in two nearby towns secured an agreement for ISIL to release the workers, kidnapped from the plant located near the town of Dumayr, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.<\/p>\n<p>The Britain-based monitor said around 170 workers were freed as others had already managed to escape.<\/p>\n<p>A military source the told AFP news agency that he saw dozens of cement workers arrive on Friday evening at a nearby regime-held military airport.<\/p>\n<p>Syrian state television said IS had kidnapped 300 workers and contractors. The Observatory said 140 workers had fled before the fighters arrived.<\/p>\n<p>ISIL&#8217;s latest attacks near Damascus are seen as retaliation for military setbacks suffered by the group elsewhere in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Syrian regime forces &#8211; backed by Russian warplanes &#8211; drove ISIL from the strategic and ancient city of Palmyra, which the fighters had controlled for 10 months.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11523 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/3c2b23daa885461eba3c296c36d93af1_18.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot from video published online by ISIL&#039;s Amaq website showing the cement factory near Dumayr \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Workers at cement plant kidnapped earlier this week after ISIL launched attack on Syrian government forces near Dumayr.} The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has released most of the cement workers it kidnapped on Thursday, a monitoring group said. It was still unclear how many were being held [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24482"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24482"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}