“Our 16 workers have just been received by our Baghdad ambassador”, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Twitter.
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The workers had been in captivity since September 2, when militants took them away from a stadium construction site run by the Turkish firm Nurol Insaat in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City.
“Sixteen of the earlier kidnapped Turkish workers are now in our embassy in Baghdad”.
The workers appeared in a video days after their abduction, kneeling in front of five masked gunmen and a banner bearing a slogan used by Shia militias in Iraq. Two of them were released in mid-September. I have spoken to a few of them by telephone.
“I thank from my heart our Iraqi friends who showed intensive efforts for our workers”, he wrote.
Iraqi security officials confirmed Wednesday that the remained hostages had been found alive and safe near Mosayeb, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, and had been transported to the capital.
On Monday, the militant group responsible for the kidnapping wrote about the release of the rest of the kidnapped workers in its account on the social network. It was not immediately clear how the workers were freed. “They have no problem or anything”, Kaymakci told Reuters.
A deal was reached last week for a truce in an area where Syrian regime forces backed by Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, also supported by Tehran, have been battling Sunni Muslim rebels.
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In 2014, 46 Turkish citizens were captured in the city of Mosul, Iraq, by the Islamic State for about three months, but were released unharmed.
