40 Indians missing in Iraq

At least 40 Indian nationals, who remained stranded in strife-torn Iraq in the last several days, are reported to have been kidnapped by Indian media. Newspaper reports on Wednesday said the construction workers, stranded in the violence-hit Gulf country, were kidnapped by suspected militants. The Indian foreign ministry today also said that the forty Indian employees, stranded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, are ‘uncontactable’. However, a ministry spokesman, said in New Delhi that he could not confirm the report in the Times of India that insurgents have abducted the 40 workers in Mosul amid a deteriorating security situation there. ‘Despite our best efforts at this stage we haven’t been able to contact them. So they remain uncontactable at this stage,’ spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters. ‘Beyond that I am not able to confirm or verify reports of a speculative nature (abduction),’ Akbaruddin said. ‘At this stage we have no reports whatsoever, no confirmation, no verification of any Indian national being involved in any violent accident or injury.’ The Indian foreign ministry has set up a 24-hour control room in New Delhi to provide information on Iraq and was dispatching a former envoy to the country to assist its embassy in Baghdad. The Times of India, citing unnamed sources, said the 40, who were working on various projects, were abducted by the militants during an evacuation of the Mosul area. Since launching their offensive on June 9, the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has captured Mosul and a big chunk of mainly-Sunni Arab territory stretching south towards the capital. As many as 46 Indian nurses were also stranded in Iraq waiting for the turmoil to subside, according to NDTV.