Five IS militants killed in airstrikes in Iraq
Five Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in airstrikes in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, the Iraqi military said on Saturday.
Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh will visit Iraq on 1 April to bring back the mortal remains of 39 Indians who were killed by the Islamic State in Mosul.
Singh will visit Iraq in a special IAF aircraft, which will return to India on April 2. According to media reports, the IAF plane will directly land at Amritsar in Punjab and three other states.
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The minister had earlier told the media that the Indian Embassy was in the process of finalising all the documents, and that he would fly to Iraq in a special aircraft after that to bring the bodies back to India.
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Indian Ambassador to Iraq Pradeep Singh Purohit and his team of officials worked tirelessly to complete the formalities.
Of the 39 Indians confirmed dead by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj last week, 27 were from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh, six from Bihar and two from West Bengal.
The bodies of the Indians were recently exhumed from a mass grave in Iraq’s Badush, nearly four years after they were kidnapped by the Islamic State.
The remains of 38 of the victims matched with the DNA samples collected from their families. The DNA of one person, said to be Raju Yadav from Bihar, matched 70 per cent with that of his relatives as he did not have parents.
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