1st LD: 16 kidnapped Turkish workers freed in Iraq

Sixteen Turkish workers held in Iraq since early September have been released, a group purportedly behind the kidnapping said in an online statement on Monday.

The release was made after the Turkish government met the captors' demands, the group said in a videotaped statement, which showed a black banner reading "Oh Hussein," a reference to Imam Hussein, the third of the 12 imams recognized by Shiite Muslims as the successors of the Prophet Muhammad.

The decision to release the 16 Turkish workers was made after Turkey "ordered the criminal al-Fat'h militia (Sunni militia in Syria)" to ease the siege of two towns in northwestern Syria and opened a safe passage for "10,000 innocent women, children, elderly and sick people" trapped there, the statement said.

Iraqi security authorities and the Turkish embassy in Baghdad have no immediate comment on the latest release of the kidnapped Turkish workers.

The video clip, whose authenticity could not be independently verified, showed 16 Turkish workers sitting in three lines.

The 16 were among 18 Turkish workers kidnapped on Sept. 2, when unidentified gunmen riding 20 vehicles stormed a building of a Turkish construction company in the Shiite bastion of Sadr city district in eastern Baghdad.

Two of those held were later released in the city of Basra, some 550 km south of Baghdad, according to an Iraqi interior ministry source.

The security situation in Iraq has drastically deteriorated since June 2014, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and the IS.

Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups such as the IS on the United States, which invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext of seeking to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. The war led to the ouster and eventual execution of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but no WMD was found. Endit