Iraq unrest: Gunmen seize hospital with stranded Indian nurses

As the crisis in Iraq escalates, Indian nurses in Tikrit told Human Rights watchdog Amnesty International India that armed men had seized control of the government hospital where they were employed and are stranded. Nurses also told Amnesty that the gunmen assured them that they would not be harmed. “They told us that they won’t harm us. But they are carrying guns. We are feeling threatened,” one of them said. According to Amnesty, one of the nurses said: “Earlier the bombs were being thrown outside the hospital. After Monday evening’s bombing, we are very scared. The threat is much more real. The hospital was filled with smoke after a few wings of the hospital, not far from the nurses’ quarters, were bombed.” They said they had been forced to move into the basement after bombs went off inside the hospital compound on Monday. [caption id=“attachment_1574715” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A young Iraqi boy holds a weapon to join fight against militants. AFP image[/caption] The Indian Ambassador to Iraq, Iraqi authorities and members of the International Committee of the Red Cross were in touch with them on a daily basis, they said, adding: “When the fighting began, the Indian ambassador asked us to call him if we needed help. The Embassy has been very helpful.” The nurses also told Amnesty that they had not faced shortage of food, water or electricity so far, but that they were only ones left from the hospital staff. “No member of the hospital management is around any more. Iraqi authorities used to come to the hospital to reassure us. Now they have also stopped coming. It is just us, some Bangladeshi workers who came here for some construction work and the gunmen,” one of them told Amnesty. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) declared captured swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria the ‘Caliphate’ and called for global jihad, as the Iraqi parliament failed to form a new government in the face of a lightning onslaught by militants. However, several nurses also explained their previous hesitation in coming back: wages in India are not enough to pay off their student loans.  Nurses who spoke to Amnesty told the watchdog that 15 of them, who had joined the hospital in February 2014, haven’t received even their salaries first salaries yet. They were supposed to be paid wages for the first four months together, however hospital authorities delayed payment because of Parliamentary elections in April. “There is no guarantee that we will be paid if we go back to India. So we will all have to give up five months of our salaries, which runs into thousands of US dollars. If I return home without any money, my father has to use the little money he gets from farming to repay my education loan. My younger brother and sister will have to drop out of school,” one of the nurses told Amnesty. In its release, Amnesty said that the nurses have asked both the Iraqi and Indian government for help in recovering their unpaid wages. “We knew Iraq was more dangerous when compared to many other countries. But we still came here because there is stiff competition to get into hospitals in the Gulf countries. Recruiting agents charge much less for arranging work in Iraq than for other countries,” said one of them. The human rights watchdog also urged the Centre to ensure the safety of the nurses and ensure that they be allowed to leave and return to India if they wish to.