Forty Indians Abducted In Mosul As Iraqi Security Forces Fight Back
By Countercurrents.org
18 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org
40 Indian citizens had been kidnapped in the violence-hit Iraqi city of Mosul. The men are construction workers. India had not received any ransom demand.
On Tuesday, the government said it was in touch with 46 Indian nurses stranded in a hospital in Tikrit. Tikrit and Mosul are under the control of the militant Sunni group ISIS. They are among a number of Iraqi towns and cities seized in the past week.
"Forty Indian workers of the Tariq Noor Al Huda company in Mosul have been kidnapped," foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters in Delhi.
"We have not received any calls of any nature asking for ransom... and it is not known where they are being held," he added.
The workers are mostly from northern India.
The nurses said they were confined to a dormitory within the hospital and had had no work for the last few days because only the emergency department at the hospital was working.
India says it is in contact with the Red Crescent and the United Nations, but it is safer for the nurses to stay put in the hospital since it is not safe to travel by road at the moment.
Iraqi Security Forces Fight Back
Meanwhile Iraqi security forces have battled rebels targeting the country's main oil refinery and have claimed to regain partial control of a city near the Syrian border.
"We have now started our counter-offensive, regaining the initiative and striking back," Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi prime minister, said on Wednesday.
Maliki's relatively upbeat assessment came as the military claimed its forces regained parts of the strategic city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, which ISIL fighters captured on Monday. Its closeness to the Syrian border strengthens the armed group's plan to carve out an "Islamic emirate" stretching across the Iraq-Syria border.
Also on Wednesday, Iraqi government forces repelled an attack by rebels on the country's largest oil refinery at Beiji, some 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, said Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi, the chief military spokesman.
Moussawi said 40 attackers were killed in fighting there overnight and on Wednesday morning. There was no independent confirmation of his claims, nor those on the Iraqi military retaking neighbourhoods in Tal Afar.
In Salaheddin province, the rebels seized three villages, Albu Hassan, Birwajli and Bastamli, in northern Iraq on Wednesday during clashes with Iraq's security forces and residents. The fighting left at least 20 civilians dead, Shallal Abdul Baban, a local official, said on Wednesday.
Later on Wednesday, the United Arab Emitate recalled its envoy from Iraq and slams 'sectarian' policies.
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