KIRKUK - Islamic State freed around 350 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority on Saturday, delivering them to safety in the country's Kurdish north.

Almost all those released were elderly, disabled, or unwell, and included several infants with serious illnesses, according to a Reuters reporter who saw them arrive in the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk.

Islamic State militants attacked Yazidis in northwest Iraq last summer, killing or capturing and enslaving thousands of the minority group. Those who could fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region, where many are living in camps along with other religious and ethnic minorities as well as Sunni Muslims displaced by the Islamist militants.