VK Singh meets Iraqi FM in Baghdad

NEW DELHI : Minister of state for external affairs VK Singh on Sunday met Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari in Baghdad and the issue of 39 missing Indians is understood to have figured in their discussion along with other issues.

During his visit to Iraq, Singh also held meetings with Iraqi national security adviser and chief of staff of the army in Baghdad, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

Singh is in Iraq to meet senior officials to coordinate the search operations for the 39 missing Indians and find concrete information related to their whereabouts. In a statement last week, the Iraqi embassy here had said Iraq and India continue their close cooperation in order to find the location of the missing Indi- ans who were kidnapped by ISIS terrorist group in June 2014.

39 Indians, mostly from Punjab’s Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar districts, went missing in Iraq’s Mosul when it was overrun by the Islamic State. The central government continues to classify the 39 men as “missing”.

DNA samples of the kin of eight men, who are among the 39 Indians missing, were collected at the Government Medical College in Amritsar on Saturday. The DNA samples of 21 family members of the missing men were collected on the directions of the external affairs ministry.

SINGH IS IN IRAQ TO MEET SENIOR OFFICIALS TO COORDINATE SEARCH OPERATIONS FOR 39 MISSING INDIANS