Indian nurses abducted in Iraq released, to fly home

Nearly 50 Indian nurses who were abducted by suspected Islamist militants in Iraq have been released and will soon be flown home, an Indian official said on Friday. The nurses, all from the southern Indian state of Kerala, were being moved from the northern city of Mosul to the city of Erbil, some 80 kilometres away, said P. Sivadasan, an aide to Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. Sivadasan and Chandy both spoke to some of the nurses by phone. Officials at India's foreign ministry were not immediately available to comment on the status of the nurses. The nurses were abducted earlier this month from a hospital in the militant-controlled city of Tikrit in Iraq. They were expected to move to the Kurdish regional capital where Indian officials were waiting to receive them. The abductions, along with the capture of 39 other Indian workers in Mosul, have left Indian authorities scrambling to secure their release and their fate is the first foreign crisis for the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Some here... they are saying... we will go to Arbil,” Tincy Thomas, one of the nurses, told by telephone, adding that the group had recently been moved to Mosul from Tikrit, where their ordeal began on June 11. An Indian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the group was separate from another 39 Indian workers being held in Mosul, Iraq's second-biggest city and the first to fall in an offensive that has overrun swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad. The father of one of the nurses, Chakiriyamthadathil Joseph from southern Kerala state, reported that five of the women had sustained minor injuries while being moved from Tikrit to Mosul due to an explosion.