Turkish workers kidnapped in Iraq are released

Two other hostages were released September 16.

Davutoglu announced the news on his Twitter account and said the workers had been handed over to the Turkish ambassador in Iraq.

“They are now in Baghdad and in good health”, the official said on condition of anonymity.

“They are now in embassy vehicles, the Iraqi authorities will probably have a few questions to ask them”, he said. A few looked exhausted but they seemed in generally good health.

The kidnappers, believed to be Shiite Muslims, had demanded that Turkey stop flow of militants from Turkey to Iraq and halt the passage of allegedly stolen petroleum from Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region through Turkey.

The Anadolu Agency says Wednesday the workers were freed in the city of Basra and were traveling to Baghdad.

A soldier was killed when security forces clashed with Tehran-backed Shiite militia Ketaeb Hezbollah …

A video of the kidnapped Turkish workers was released online Sunday, in which a captured Turkish man reads a statement saying they were treated well by their captors, RUDAW reported.

Iraqi Sunnis accuse Shiite paramilitaries of abuses. It was not immediately clear how the workers were freed.

The release seemed created to project political might and rule out any suggestion that the kidnappings were perpetrated by a purely criminal extortionist organisation.

Nurol Holding said no previous threat was received. “They have no problem or anything”, Kaymakci told Reuters.

This is not the first case of Turkish citizens being kidnapped in Iraq.