Tears, smiles greet nurses from Iraq

KOCHI: A group of 46 nurses caught up in fighting in Iraq arrived home in India on Saturday after briefly being held captive by suspected militants, an outcome celebrated by the newly elected government in New Delhi as an early diplomatic success. The nurses, mainly from Kerala, were met by family members clutching bouquets of flowers and overjoyed that they were home barely two days after being taken against their will from a hospital in the Iraqi city of Tikrit.

“I thought I will never come back. I thought, [in the] last two days I am finished. These are my last days,” one nurse called Marina told Reuters TV at Kochi airport in Kerala. Tikrit, the birthplace of former president Saddam Hussein, was a site of fierce fighting this week as Iraqi troops battled to regain control of the city from the al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The nurses had been holed up in a hospital in the city since the Islamic insurgents and other Sunni Muslim militant groups seized towns and cities across Syria and Iraq in a lightning advance last month. Many were initially unwilling to leave because of debts back at home, and then were trapped as the fighting grew more fierce. On Thursday, they were ordered to board buses and driven to the militant-controlled city of Mosul, where they were held in a building overnight. Most of them vowed not to go back.

“We will not go back. There is no question of going back. We are not prepared to endanger our lives once again,” said Sandra Sebastian, a nurse. The nurses said they had been treated well by their captors. “They were good people because they did not misbehave with us. They provided food, accommodation and whatever we wanted,” a nurse said.