39 Indians missing in Iraq killed by Daesh

NEW DELHI: Dozens of Indian workers missing in Iraq for four years were killed by Daesh, the country’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.

India will transport the remains of the 39 victims back to their homeland, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told Parliament.

A group of 40 Indian men, most from the northern state of Punjab, had gone to Mosul as laborers. They, and several Bangladeshi men, were abducted by Daesh when the extremist group overran Iraq’s second-largest city in 2014, Swaraj said.

The terror group released the Bangladeshi men and one Indian, who disguised himself as a Muslim, she said. But the fate of the remaining 39 workers had remained unclear. After Daesh was ousted from Mosul last summer, India requested Iraq’s help to find the missing men.

“We hadn’t heard from any of these men since Mosul was freed, and the chances of their remaining alive were slim. We were looking in the mortuaries,” Swaraj said.

Investigators from India and an Iraqi government official found the bodies in a mass grave near the village of Badosh, northwest of Mosul.

It was not clear when the men had been killed. An organization in Baghdad, Martyrs Foundation, agreed to test their DNA if India could provide samples from the missing men’s families for comparison, Swaraj said.

“Yesterday they informed us that the DNAs have matched 38 bodies,” Swaraj said. The remaining body had a 70 percent match, she said.

“This was a very difficult task for us,” Swaraj said. “Iraq is a huge nation, a desert country. When Daesh was expelled from Mosul, there were bodies everywhere. To find our people was a huge challenge.”

Swaraj came under fire last year over her refusal to confirm the deaths of the missing men. At the time the minister said she did not want to “sin” by declaring them dead without proof.

On Tuesday, the opposition Congress Party criticized the government for misleading the nation and the families of the 39 men.

Swaraj said she wanted “solid evidence” before declaring the men dead. Their families will now “get closure,” she said.

Indian resident Seema, left, her sons Karan, second right, and Arjun, second left, and her mother in-law Jeeto react on Tuesday following confirmation by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that her husband Sonu had been killed in Iraq, in the...