Davutoglu: 16 Turkish workers held in Baghdad released
Turkish PM tweets that Turkey's envoy in Iraq has received 16 Turkish workers, who were held captive by an armed Shia group earlier this month in Baghdad
Sixteen Turkish workers, who were held captive by an armed Shia group earlier this month in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, have all been released, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced Wednesday.
In remarks made in Turkish via his official Twitter account, Davutoglu said: "Our ambassador in Baghdad just received 16 workers who had been held captive for a while in Baghdad. I talked to some of them over the phone".
In total, 18 Turkish workers were kidnapped earlier this month in a Baghdad suburb by an armed Shia group. Two of them, Necdet Yilmaz and Ercan Ozpilavci, were released on September 17.
Davutoglu said that all 16 workers were in good health and added that efforts were currently underway to bring the victims back home to Turkey at the earliest.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also congratulated over the phone Turkey's Baghdad Ambassador Faruk Kaymakci and two of the freed workers, and offered them his best wishes.
Kaymakci had accompanied the released workers in a car from southern Iraq’s Basra region to the Turkish embassy in Baghdad.
All the abducted Turkish workers were employees of Nurol Holding, a Turkish construction firm that is currently carrying out developmental projects in the Iraqi capital.
Earlier this month, a video appeared online showing the 18 abductees kneeling before five masked men brandishing guns. In the video, the abductees – who include three engineers and an accountant – gave their names and the names of their hometowns in Turkey.
