Sunni militants free 32 Turkish truck drivers in Iraq

BAGHDAD // Sunni militants on Thursday released 32 Turkish truck drivers who were captured during a lightning offensive across northern and western Iraq last month.

The Turklish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the truckers were heading toward Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, and would be flown later to Ankara.

The drivers were well, although one may need special treatment, Mr Davutoglu told reporters in the Turkish capital, without elaborating or giving any details about their release.

Militants from the extremist group now calling itself the Islamic State seized the truck drivers on June 9 in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Three days later, they took another 49 people from the Turkish consulate in the city.

Mr Davutoglu said efforts were under way to secure the release of the Turks still in captivity.

“The critical process continues,” he said. “Our prayers and our efforts will go on for the rest of them and, God willing, we will share such good news about them too as soon as possible.”

The militants’ takeover of Mosul was followed by the capture of Tikrit on June 11, which left 46 Indian nurses stranded at a hospital in the city.

India’s ministry of external affairs said on Thursday that the nurses were safe but had been forced to move to a new area controlled by the militants.

Syed Akbaruddin, the ministry spokesman, would not say who was moving the medical workers, but said the nurses “did not go on their own free will”.

He described the situation as one of “grave difficulty” because the area is not under the control of the Iraqi army and is not accessible to humanitarian organisations.

He denied reports that there was a bomb blast as the nurses left Tikrit, but said some received minor injuries when some glass broke as they were leaving the hospital.

He said Indian embassy officials in Baghdad had spoken to some of the nurses as they left Tikrit.

He also said 40 Indian construction workers abducted two weeks ago near Mosul were still being held, but were unharmed.

Meanwhile, two Bangladeshi construction workers who returned home from Iraq said hundreds of their compatriots had been beaten and humiliated by soldiers in Iraq.

Some had their beards shaved off by the mainly Shiite troops after being accused of sympathising with Sunni insurgents while one of them was stripped naked, the men said.

“They abducted the Bangladeshi cleric from our camp mosque last Thursday and when he was released on Saturday, you could see torture marks all over his body,” Raqibul Islam said.

“They burnt his beard with cigarettes and then cut it off with knife. His body was also beaten with stones.

“He was tortured because he is a Sunni. He was returned only after we stopped work and protested his abduction,” he added.

Mofidul Islam, another of the group of 21 workers who managed to return to Bangladesh on Tuesday, said abuses had been widespread.

“The Iraqis beat hundreds of our colleagues. They think that a beard is a sign that you are a Sunni militant so whoever has a big beard was targeted and beaten mercilessly,” said Islam.

“One of the workers was made to strip naked and then beaten. They entered our camps and locked the doors and then beat the workers with rifles,” he added.

The Bangladeshis were all working on construction projects in the Bismayah region, south of Baghdad, when Sunni militants began seizing large parts of the country from the Iraqi army last month.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Press