Forty Indian employees stranded in violence-hit Iraq are “uncontactable”, the Indian foreign ministry said today, with a newspaper reporting that construction workers have been kidnapped. A ministry spokesman said he could not confirm the report in the Times of India that insurgents have abducted the 40 workers in the northern city of Mosul amid a deteriorating security situation. 

“Despite our best efforts at this stage we haven’t been able to contact them. So they remain uncontactable at this stage,” foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters. “Beyond that I am not able to confirm or verify reports of a speculative nature (kidnapping),” Akbaruddin added. 

“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 militants during an evacuation of the Mosul area. 

As many as 46 Indian nurses were also stranded in Iraq waiting for the turmoil to subside. Several have told NDTV and other Indian television stations by phone that they were living like prisoners at a state-run hospital in Tikrit city after being abandoned by their employers as well as the military.

Published on: 19 June 2014 | The Kathmandu Post