A Syrian human rights group says the authorities in Damascus have freed aboutthirty political prisoners, including an opposition Communist party leader and a human rights activist.

A Paris-based spokesman for the group , the Committees for the Defence of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria -- or CDF, said one of its members, Aktham Nuwaisseh, who was jailed in 1991, had been released on Sunday.

The spokesman said the head of an exiled faction of the Communist Party, Riyad al-Turk, had also been freed after seventeen years in jail.

Officials in Damascus have confirmed the releases.

The CDF welcomed the move as a positive gesture, but has called for the release of five other CDF activists from Syrian jails.