Sixteen Turkish workers kidnapped from a construction site in Baghdad and held for nearly a month were released on Wednesday, Turkey’s prime minister and Iraqi officials said.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said through his Twitter account that the workers were handed over to the Turkish ambassador in Iraq and that they were all in good health, AP reports.
In Baghdad, the spokesman for the city’s military command, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim confirmed the release and said the Turkish workers were now inside the Turkish Embassy.
The men, employed by Turkish construction company Nurol Insaat, were part of a group of 18 Turkish workers snatched in Baghdad’s Sadr City on Sept. 2. After their abduction, a video from a previously unknown militant group showed the hostages and demanded Turkey halt the flow of militants into Iraq, stop the passage of oil from Iraq’s northern Kurdish region via Turkish territory and lift what was described as a “siege” on Syrian cities.
The brazen abduction laid bare serious security gaps in the heavily guarded Baghdad. Then, two of the kidnapped workers were released later in September in the southern city of Basra.
Davutoglu thanked “Iraqi friends” who had worked toward the men’s release, without elaborating. “Preparations are underway to ensure their return home as soon as possible,” he said.
Ibrahim said that the 16 workers were found Wednesday in the town of Musayyib, about 60 kilometers south of Baghdad.
