India to receive bodies of 39 workers killed by IS in Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – An Indian official said on Saturday that he would travel to Baghdad the following day to bring home the remains of 39 Indian construction workers killed by the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq in 2014.

The bodies were discovered by Iraqi authorities in a mass grave near a village outside the former IS stronghold of Mosul, nearly four years later. On March 20, an announcement by India’s Foreign Minister to the Indian Parliament ended the long wait for victims' loved ones to finally learn of their fate.

"We will hand over the mortal remains to their families," General Vijay Kumar Singh, India's Union Minister of State for External Affairs, who will oversee the transfer. "They will not have to come to the airport."

"After visiting Baghdad to retrieve the bodies, we will then fly to Amritsar, where we will hand over the bodies of 27 people from Punjab and four bodies from Himachal Pradesh to the families there. Then, we will go to Kolkata to handover the two bodies there. And in Patna, we will hand over the remaining bodies," he explained to the Indian media.

When IS took over large swaths of Iraq in 2014, there were approximately 10,000 Indians employed in the country as construction workers, oil field engineers, and medical professionals, according to statistics provided by the Indian government.

Until the March 20 announcement, many of the victims’ relatives believed their loved ones were still alive and held captive by IS militants.

Just after the announcement, the UN's Special Representative for Iraq Jan Kubis said in a statement that the incident "was yet another example of the barbarism and cruelty of this terrorist organisation."