Turkish Workers Kidnapped in Baghdad Appear in Hostage Video

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said 16 workers were released. “I talked to a few of them on the phone”. It was not immediately clear how the workers were freed.

A Turkish plane carrying the workers from the Iraqi capital Baghdad landed at an Ankara airport, where they were embraced by their relatives.

On Monday, the workers appeared in an online video promising their release, days after a UN-backed deal to extricate Syrian villagers under siege from rebels supported by Ankara. “Their health is in good condition, and they will be returned to Turkey as soon as all the necessary preparations would be finished”, Davutoglu wrote in his Twitter account.

Ibrahim told the AP that the workers were found Wednesday in the town of Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad.

The men, employed by Turkish construction company Nurol Insaat, were part of a group of 18 Turkish workers snatched in Baghdad’s Shiite-dominated Sadr City on September 2.

Two other hostages were released September 16.

No further information was available about the circumstances of their release or when they were freed.

The demands, directed at the Turkish government, including ending the “flow of gunmen” into Iraq and halting oil exports coming from northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

In June 2014, jihadists from the Islamic State group kidnapped 49 staff from Turkey’s consulate in Mosul after seizing control of the city.

But Sadr City, where the 18 Turks were kidnapped, is a stronghold of Shiite paramilitary forces opposed to the jihadists. Officials in Iraq and Turkey were not immediately available to comment.