Exhumed bodies of the victims will be brought back to India on a special plane, Swaraj said. MoS External Affairs V K Singh will travel to Iraq to bring back the bodies.
Breaking News : India said on Tuesday that 39 Indians, who were believed to have been kidnapped by militants in Iraq in 2014, had been confirmed dead after their bodies were found.
The bodies were recovered from a mass grave and DNA tests had confirmed them to be the construction workers who went missing from the Iraqi city of Mosul, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj told parliament.
70 per cent DNA matching of the 39th body has been done, Swaraj added.
“With full proof I can say these 39 are dead,” the minister said.
The government had for years said it would only declare the men dead once it had full evidence.
Exhumed bodies of the victims will be brought back to India on a special plane, Swaraj said. Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh will travel to Iraq to bring back the bodies.
22 of the 39 Indians killed by ISIS were from Punjab
It has been over four years that 39 Indians went missing in Iraq’s Mosul town when it was overrun by the Islamic State.
Among them, 22 were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar in Punjab.
Their families continued to swing between the hope of the men being found alive and fear that they will hear the worst.
After Mosul was freed from the clutches of the Islamic State in July, there was hope that the missing Indians will be found. However, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, during his India visit in July, said he was not sure if the men were alive or not.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had earlier assured the families, who have met her several times, that all efforts were being made to trace the missing men, who had been held hostage in Iraq’s Mosul town by terror outfit ISIS in June 2014.
The affected families, who are all from poor backgrounds mostly from rural areas of Punjab, say they can do nothing else but pin hope on the government’s and the minister’s assurances.
A man from Punjab, Harjit Masih, who escaped from the clutches of ISIS in June 2014 had claimed that all 39 Indians had been killed.
A man from Punjab, Harjit Masih, who escaped from the clutches of ISIS in June 2014 had claimed that all 39 Indians had been killed.
However, Sushma Swaraj has maintained that there was no information confirming that the Indians were dead.
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