New Delhi:
46 Indian nurses held captive in war-torn Iraq have been freed by the Sunni militant group ISIS, Kerala government sources have told NDTV.
The nurses have being taken to Erbil, from where they will take a flight to India. Most of them are from Kerala.
Here are 10 developments in this story:
The nurses are being taken by militants from Mosul to Erbil 80 km away, where they will be handed over to Indian officials. They are likely to be flown to Delhi and then Kochi in Kerala.
"A special plane is ready to leave at short notice," foreign ministry sources told NDTV.
46 Indian and 10 Bangladeshi nurses, who had been living in a hospital in Tikrit, were yesterday forced to board two buses and taken to Mosul. They were reportedly kept at a hospital there.
On Thursday, the government said the nurses agreed to move for their own safety but against their "free will."
Bringing out Indians from Iraq is the first major foreign policy challenge for the new government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Two weeks ago, 39 Indian construction workers were kidnapped from Mosul. The government said they had been seen and they were "safe and unharmed."
Tikrit, the birthplace of former president Saddam Hussein, has been the site of fierce fighting this week as Iraqi troops battle to regain control of the city from the Sunni insurgents group Islamic State - which was known as ISIS or ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Islamic State insurgents and other Sunni Muslim militant groups seized towns and cities across Syria and Iraq in a lightning advance last month declared a ''caliphate" on the first day of Ramzan.
Indian nurses earn higher wages in West Asia and the Gulf than at home. Some of the nurses have been resisting returning to India because they had taken large loans to get overseas work.
About 10,000 Indians work in Iraq. Scores of them have returned to India since fighting began. The government says some 900 people are ready to fly home.
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