Freed nurses back home, safe
46 have emotional reunion with families; govt says 400 more Indians to be back by Monday
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The 46 nurses caught up in fierce fighting in Iraq and briefly held captive by ISIS militants were brought back to India on Saturday. Exhausted, relieved and teary-eyed, they ran into the arms of their equally emotional families waiting at Kochi airport. They were home and safe.
“The entire nation prayed for us. These prayers helped us return unscathed,” said Marina Joseph, one of the 46. So happy to be home were the young women, they even praised their captors, referring to them simply as the “bearded boys”, saying they never misbehaved with them and protected them.
“Our fear forced us to hate them. But later, we found that in such a lawless situation, they were protecting us. At their mercy, they could have done anything to us but they didn’t,” said NS Shruti.
All of them said they would never go back.
The external affairs ministry said more Indians would be evacuated in the days to come, starting with 200 on board an Iraqi Airways special chartered flight from Najaf to Delhi on Saturday night. In the next 48 hours, another 400 would be home. At least 1,200 would have returned by Monday, an MEA spokesperson said.
In addition, the spokesperson said, the Indian mission in Baghdad had managed to persuade Iraqi companies to send back 600 Indians working with them and was also processing the papers of 400 others. Once these were processed, the number of Indians who would have returned in the last fortnight would be about 2,200 with just a few more left who have evinced interest in returning.
A special Air India flight with the 46 on board — along with 137 others, including 23 crew and three government officials — landed in Kochi at noon, after a fuel stop in Mumbai. The nurses had been holed up for over a week in ISIS-over run Tikrit before being forcibly moved out Thursday to Mosul, also under the group’s control.