Mumbai: A special Air India Plane carrying 46 Indian nurses landed in Mumbai from the airport in Erbil on Saturday morning in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in the violence hit-Iraq. A special plane carrying an official each from the Kerala State Government as well as the Central Government reached Erbil on Friday to get all the 46 nurses back to India. The Air India Boeing 777 has stopped over in Mumbai for refueling. It is set head for Kochi shortly. Most of the Indian Nurses being brought back from Iraq belongs to Kerala. Air India’s special customer service team would be at the Kochi airport to provide all necessary assistance to the passengers.
The 46 nurses had been kept in the captivity of the ISIS Militants for nearly two days until they had been handed over to the Indian officials in Erbil on Friday afternoon.
Apart from the 46 nurses, the plane also carried a 100 other Indians who had been working in Iraq and now wanted to come back because of the crisis ongoing in the country. On Friday evening, the government confirmed that they had been freed.
The spokesperson of Foreign Ministry said, “Hope has triumphed. The nurses moved against their will are free.”
One of the nurses told the media that despite in militant captivity, none of them had been harmed. The nurse also said that they had been initially taken to Mosul, from Tikrit and had been put up in a hospital, wherein they had been given food and water.
The nurses had been living in a hospital in Tikrit before being captivated by the militants. Tikrit has witnessed fierce fighting this week as Iraqi troop’s battle to regain control of the city from the Sunni insurgent group ISIS or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Bureau Report
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