Around 50 Indian nurses taken from hospital in Iraqi militant stronghold -Indian officials
Source: Reuters
Nearly 50 Indian nurses from the southern state of Kerala have been taken against their will from a hospital in the militant-controlled city of Tikrit in Iraq, India's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
At a briefing with reporters, Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin declined to say who had ordered the nurses to leave the hospital or where they were taken.
Asked if the nurses had been kidnapped, Akbaruddin said: "In zones of conflict there is no free will ... This is a situation where lives are at stake."
A senior aide to Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who spoke to the nurses on Thursday, told Reuters that "militants" had forced the nurses to vacate the hospital and board two buses.
Read more: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/03/iraq-india-idINL4N0PE34320140703
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)That does not bode well.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)This could be simply a press-gang operation to secure treatment for wounded jihadis.
But certainly there are darker possibilities.
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,294 posts)Indian nurses forced to move from Tikrit by ISIS; some injured
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indian-nurses-forced-to-move-from-tikrit-by-isis-some-injured/1266543
Botany
(70,291 posts)If the nurses are Hindu they might already be dead. We have opened the gates of hell.
sanatanadharma
(3,639 posts)From this Monday, 23 June 2014 article about Indian nurses in Iraq
Close to 10,000 nursing students graduate in Kerala every year. Thousands more study outside the state. In 2012, over 27,000 nurses registered with the state nursing council while in 2013, the number was about 25,000, ...
Healthcare industry sources could not immediately say how many nursing jobs are created every year in the state but stressed that it would be far less than the registration figures. So, most of these nurses only option is to move out of Kerala."
"How it started
Father Paul Thelekkat, spokesperson for the Syro-Malabar Church, offered an insight into why Kerala has so many nurses.
Its linked to the spread of the Syrian Christian community. Initially, the community had high child mortality rates and this forced many nun congregations to associate themselves with medical services, he said.
Subsequently, they also started hospitals and many of the nuns became nurses. These hospitals opened nursing colleges and many Christian families found it the ideal way to combine service with their livelihood. They began sending their wards to these nursing colleges.
More: The turmoil in Iraq has been felt in Kerala state in India as 65 nurses -- the majority of them Catholic -- remained trapped in Mosul and Tikrit.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)This is the atmosphere the NRA, GOA and OC want to have here. With defiance of federal law in NV and mobs forcing federal immigration buses to turn around and flee in CA, this is coming here in full view. It was in slow motion but is gathering steam.
All the freedoms of civil society are under attack, our speech, control of our bodies, the freedom to move about and the freedom to associate. Nice going there, ya troglodytes with an additional finger served to those who don't get it.
No difference between those who make women run the gauntlet to get to clinics in the USA and the Talibans and the Boko Harums of the world treating girls and women as despised, with no education or control over the most intimate parts of their lives, in a state of terror like rats in a maze with shocks applied for the slightest deviation from irrational parameters on their behavior with no warning.
In the meantime, media serves us the World Cup, ideology, diversions and fantasy to keep our eyes off what is encroaching the people of the world. But none of the Libertarians and RevolutionNow guys are in the street marching to stop what is done to half the world's people.
Because women are just 'hysterical,' a term made up by men to explain the intense distress bordering on torture that they'd also feel if confronted with such callousness. Oh, please shut up you hens, the elephants are busy dancing on you and no one wants to hear your squawking.
Humanity is either being mutated into something it never was, or else it is just showing what it was always about, animalistic and instinctive, not really 'human' after all.
Yes, I'm a bit bummed. "So sue me," as Obama said to Boehner. Lucky for me, I've already been impoverished by the discrimination handed out to so many, so there's no profit there. And as far as my culinary value, as an old farmer woman once told me, "They can kill me, but they can't eat me."
Oh, I forgot I could be ground up and fed to hogs or something. Never mind, the freedom to rot in peace may be taken away, too.
Hyperbole. It's what's for Breakfast.
Bosonic
(3,746 posts)NEW DELHI (AP) Dozens of Indian nurses who had been stranded in Iraqi territory held by Islamic extremists were greeted with hugs and flowers Saturday as they returned home to southern India aboard a special flight.
The 46 women had been holed up for more than a week in Tikrit, where fighters of the Islamic State group have taken over. The nurses had been moved to a new area under the extremist group's control, and finally crossed over late Friday into Irbil, in Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region.
The Indian government organized an Air India plane to fly the nurses home from Irbil. After a brief refueling stop in Mumbai, the plane landed in Kochi, in the nurses' home state of Kerala.
Outside Kochi's airport, hundreds of friends and relatives of the women greeted them with hugs and flowers. The nurses all looked exhausted and emotional, with one hugging her young nephew tightly.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/indian-nurses-stranded-iraq-return-home