NEW DELHI: Indian nurses stranded in northern Iraq have been living like prisoners at a state-run hospital in Tikrit after being abandoned by their employers as well as the military, reports said yesterday.
As many as 46 nurses from the southern state of Kerala are in Iraq waiting for the turmoil to subside, NDTV and other media reported.
“We are afraid because we have no security here,” Marina Jose, one of the nurses, told NDTV by phone from the northwestern city, which was seized by Sunni insurgents recently.
“All the military, police, everybody escaped from here. Only we are here. We are literally prisoners within the hospital premises. There are no Iraqi employees here,” she said. Since the insurgents launched their lightning assault on June 9, they have captured Mosul, a city of two million people, and a big chunk of mainly Sunni Arab territory stretching south towards the capital.
The offensive has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sent jitters through world oil markets as the militants have advanced ever nearer Baghdad leaving the Shia-led government in disarray. Jose said the Red Cross had made contact with the group. “If it is safe they (Red Cross) can take us from here. Otherwise we have to stay here,” she said.
The nurses have been struck a double blow as not only have they been affected by the strife there, but their salaries have also been cut drastically.
Another nurse said over phone from Tikrit that 46 nurses were working at a government hospital.
“Thirty of them reached here last August, while 16 came this February. They were all promised a monthly salary of $750. But today, a new manager told us that the government that hired us has changed and now the new government can only pay $200,” said the nurse, whose identity has been withheld.
She said the nurses want to return home at the earliest, and were in touch with the Indian embassy in Iraq and the Red Crescent and asked them for jobs in other hospitals.
“We are all praying that something works out,” she said.AFP/IANS
