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1st LD: Kidnapped workers in Baghdad handed over to Turkish embassy

Xinhua, September 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kidnapped Turkish workers, who were announced released two days ago by their captors, were found in south of Iraqi capital of Baghdad and were handed over to officials of the Turkish embassy, an official Iraqi television reported on Wednesday.

Iraqi security forces have found the 16 Turkish workers near Musaiyab area, some 70 km south of Baghdad, and were handed over to the officials of Turkish embassy, the state-run Iraqiya channel quoted Saad Maan, the spokesman of Baghdad Operations Command, as saying.

On Monday, a group purportedly behind the kidnapping said in a videotaped statement posted on internet that it had decided to release the 16 Turkish detainees 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 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