ISIS horror ends for Indian nurses, all 46 will be home today TNN | Jul 5, 2014, 01.58 AM IST =========================================================== NEW DELHI: A day that started with despair for Indian nationals in Iraq ended on a bright note as Sunni Islamist group ISIS on Friday afternoon released 46 Indian nurses who had been held captive. The nurses had been forcibly taken from Tikrit to ISIS stronghold Mosul sparking fear that they too had been kidnapped, like the 39 Indian construction workers who remain in captivity in that region. A special Air India plane reached Erbil, in Kurdistan, late Friday evening to bring back the nurses, who are from Kerala. A joint secretary from MEA, S.K. Sinha, has gone in the aircraft to coordinate the nurses return. MEA said along with the 46 nurses, another 70 Indians from that area have been taken to Erbil to catch the same flight back home. READ ALSO: Key Indian businessmen helped secure release of nurses The flight is expected to land directly in Kochi on Saturday morning before returning to Delhi. ISIS gunmen drove the nurses to a location not far from Erbil - about 80 km from Mosul - in a bus. Indian officials were already in Erbil to receive them. The swift release suggested there could have been behind-the -scenes negotiations with one of the most hardened jehadi outfits. However, the government, which had sent officials beforehand to Erbil, refused to part with operational details saying that more lives were at stake and that the job was only partly done. It said hope had triumphed. Refusing to divulge any details, MEA sopesperson Syed Akbaruddin said, We got in touch last evening. We have other means of getting in touch. We have won a small battle. The war is on. The tougher task will be to bring out the 39 Indian labourers in ISIS custody because the jehadis would be less concern about the threat of a global backlash that the killing of nurses would have sparked. The government was more intent on bringing the women nurses out because in a war situation, women are far more vulnerable than men. The release followed external affairs minister Sushma Swarajs appeal to foreign ministers in all Gulf countries, with whom she spoke on phone, to help bail out the Indian nationals kidnapped by the terrorist group known for its barbaric acts. Akbaruddin said India used its assets both inside and outside Iraq in the region to secure the release of the nurses who are all said to be in good health. He said Indian officials had remained in touch with the nurses throughout the evening as they were taken to Mosul. President Pranab Mukherjee tweeted his pleasure at the nurses return. We would like you to take the message that it did not happen just like that. The EAM (external affairs minister) led the efforts interacting extensively with her counterparts in the region, said Akbaruddin, who described it as a day of dramatic developments. He said India was in close contact with Kurdish authorities in the past week as they mounted an unprecedented effort to free the Indians caught in the secteraian conflict. Akbaruddin said, We are working at two levels. The external affairs minister is leading with diplomatic efforts, but our engagements go far beyond that. However, we dont want to make public our interlocutors in that region. Anything we say may possibly impact other elements (like efforts to rescue Indian workers). So, I will not say who we worked with and how we worked. We will leave no stone unturned to bring the other hostages back, he added. Within the MEA, he said, the minister led a high level core group which worked on the nurses release. On Thursday, he said, Sushma Swaraj cancelled a trip to Bhopal after it transpired that the nurses could be released. The nurses themselves told family members and relatives on phone around noon that the captors had asked them to get ready to leave in 5 minutes. They were told that they were being taken to Erbil to set them free. It is not known if there was any direct, or even indirect, contact between Indian government officials and the kidnappers. The nurses had remained stranded in a Tikrit hospital for weeks after the ISIS overran towns and cities north and northwest of Baghdad last month. ISIS gunmen entered the hospital a few days ago and took custody of the nurses but did not physically harm them. The government said that it wasnt possible to evacuate the nurses by road as the routes from Tikrit to both Erbil and Baghdad, two cities still considered safe and with airports, were controlled by armed gunmen.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 00:50:50 +0000
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