Iraq on Monday said it had no information on the fate of 39 Indians missing in the country for the…
Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (Photo: AFP)
Iraq on Monday said it had no information on the fate of 39 Indians missing in the country for the last three years and was trying to ascertain facts about their whereabouts.
Talking to reporters after his talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj here, visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said, ‘’We have no substantial evidence to say if they (Indians) were killed or they are still alive.’’
He said the safety of these Indians was not the concern of the Indian authorities or their families alone and Baghdad was equally concerned.
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Earlier, al-Jaafari is understood to have briefed Swaraj on the sketchy information his country had about these Indians who were abducted by the ISIS in June 2014 when they were trying to leave the war-torn city of Mosul.
The Iraq Government had recently claimed that it had retaken Mosul from ISIS, marking a major success for the Iraqi security forces in their war against the dreaded militant outfit.
Swaraj had recently met the families of these Indians, most of whom hail from Punjab, and said they might be languishing in a jail in Badush in northwest Mosul where the fighting was still going on.
However, certain television channels had reported last week that the jail in Badush was now an abandoned structure and had been unoccupied for weeks.
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