India steps up Iraq rescue efforts on kidnapped workers

Relatives of Indian workers who were taken hostage in Iraq pose with photographs of their loved ones at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on Thursday. — AFP

India on Thursday said that the Iraqi authorities had confirmed to it that 40 Indian workers had been abducted in the violence-torn city of Mosul in Iraq and also given some indication about where they are being held.

“I can now further confirm that our initial information, based on inputs from Iraqi Red Crescent, that 40 Indian nationals are being held in custody, has been reconfirmed by the Iraqi government,” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said at a briefing for newspersons.

He said the Iraqi Foreign Ministry had also been able to determine the location where the abducted Indian workers were being held along with workers of other nationalities. Most of the workers are from Punjab and other parts of north India and were working for a construction company in Mosul.

Chandy urges PM to send special flight to Baghdad T.K. Devasia TRIVANDRUM — Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send a special flight to Baghdad to bring Indians stranded in the conflict zones in Iraq. Non-resident Keralites Affairs (Norka) Minister K C Joseph informed the state assembly on Thursday that Chandy had written a letter to the prime minister asking him to take steps to ensure the safe return of all the Malayalees. The chief minister has been getting distress calls from 46 nurses and paramedics from the state trapped in a hospital at Tikrit. He had earlier written to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj requesting assistance from the federal government to bring them back. Joseph said that the chief minister had also asked the Prime Minister to bear the travel expenses of the people who want to return to the country. He said the state government was ready to meet the airfare of Malayalees in case the federal government was not willing to meet it.— news@khaleejtimes.com

Akbaruddin said no calls had been received from any organisation for ransom. To more queries about their location, he said, “We do have an understanding of where they are located.” He declined to go into the details and other information that the Iraq had shared with India.

He said the Embassy of India in Baghdad was persistently following up on the matter with the Iraqi authorities and these efforts had gathered speed with the arrival there on Thursday of seasoned diplomat Suresh Reddy, a former Indian Ambassador to Iraq.

He said the Crisis Management Group in the MEA met twice on Thursday with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the chair and discussed the evolving situation and various options available. Besides the 40 workers held in Mosul, as many as 46 Indian nurses, mainly from Kerala, were stranded in Tikrit. Earlier today, amidst growing concern for the safety of the abducted Indians, Swaraj said the government was doing everything it could to secure their safe and early release.

The government is coming under increasing pressure from the families of the abducted workers and political parties to act quickly.

Reports reaching here quoted Iraqi government sources and officials of the Baghdad-based construction company, Tariq Noor Al Huda, which employed the 40 Indian workers, as saying that they were safe. Media reports quoted relatives of some of the workers as saying that calls to their mobiles have gone unanswered for the past few days.

— news@khaleejtimes.com