No clue about 15 youths from Jalandhar stranded in Iraq
Monday, 23/06/2014
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JALANDHAR: There is no clue about 15 more Punjabis who were re por ted stranded in the war- torn zone of Iraq on Saturday. Jalandhar-based Non-Resident Indians (NRI) Sabha on Sunday claimed that at least five of them were feared abducted by militants of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
NRI Sabha president Jasbir Singh Shergill said some youths from Iraq on Saturday made calls on their information cell in Jalandhar informing that 15 were stuck in Sulaymaniyah of Kurdistan area in Iraq.
“One youth named Sunny contacted us and told that militants had kidnapped five of them when they were trying to escape to Baghdad. They were working at Ajmer Steel. But on Sunday we tried to establish contact on the phone numbers given by Sunny, but we could not,” the NRI Sabha president further said. Sulaymaniyah is situated about 450 kilometres from Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
Gill said the stranded youth, who hailed from Fatehgarh in Hoshiarpur, informed that militants were entering their area.
The youth, he added, even disclosed that 15 of them had no documents with them and the Indian Embassy in Iraq was also not coming to their rescue.
Following this, the NRI Sabha tried to share the information with the Indian Embassy in Iraq but could not since the landline number was not working.
Jalandhar DC Kamal Kishore Yadav informed that after getting information from the NRI Sabha, the state government had taken the matter with the ministry of external affairs (MEA).
“The ministry of external affairs infor med that a person has been given the task of searching Indians in Iraq but there is no cue so far,” the deputy commissioner further said.
