NEW DELHI — Dozens of Indian nurses who have been stranded at an Iraqi hospital are safe but are being forced to move to a new area controlled by Islamic militants, an Indian official said Thursday.
Forty-six nurses have been holed up for more than a week in Tikrit, where militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have taken over.
Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said the nurses were unharmed, but were being taken Thursday to a new area under the extremist group’s control. He would not say who was moving the medical workers, but said the nurses “did not go on their own free will.”
He described the situation as one of “grave difficulty” because the area is not under the control of the Iraqi army and is not accessible to humanitarian organizations.