Rivals in Syria freed 200 people today.

The total number of those kidnapped remains unclear. Abu al-Hassan said they included about 35 Shiites and more than 250 Sunnis. Other activists gave higher numbers.

The Sunni and Shiite Muslim villages in northern Syria have been in a battle of abductions and kidnappings.

Letting 200 people go in a plan that would ease tensions that threatened to touch off sectarian violence, activists said to the Associated Press.

The rebels claim the abductions started on February 14. A bus carrying dozens of Shiite civilians, filled with mostly women and children, disappeared on the road to Damascus.

Shiites responded by snatching civilians from the Sunni villages nearby.

Makeshift checkpoints were made on the rural roads. They snatched some there. Others were taken while entering the provincial capital, which government troops still control. Many of the Sunnis captives, too, were woman and children.

Most of the rebels fighting Assad's forces are poor, rural members of Syria's Sunni majority. Those in favor of Assad are largely stocked in the upper ranks of the country's security agencies and armed forces.

"They started taking over buses from the opposition villages that were heading to Idlib city," said activist Hamza Abu al-Hassan from the village of Binnish. "Some of them had government jobs or had to file papers or were just going to visit their families."

This is part of the ongoing civil war, pitting President Bashar Assad and the hundreds of rebel groups seeking his dismissal. It has increased tensions between Syria's myriad of religious groups.

Both sides freeing captives has temporarily eased tensions before matters could have been worse and more dangerous, especially for civilians.