Families and relatives of 46 Keralite nurses, who are trapped among the bombs, rockets and bullets of ISIS militants and the official military in Iraq, fell into a whirlpool of fear and anxiety on Thursday after receiving news that they were being taken out of Tikrit where they had been stranded and that some of them had suffered injuries.
Having no idea about where exactly they were, to what destination they were being taken, and who had got injured, parents and relatives of the nurses seemed totally lost in the grip of panic even as Chief Minister Oommen Chandy kept on stating his inability to reveal details of their trip out of Tikrit, where they had been stranded in a hospital ever since the conflict started.
Subin, a relative of Seona, one of the nurses trapped in Iraq, said the last time she spoke to him was just after some of them suffered injuries in a reported shell blast.
“She told me about the accident. It was at 2.15 pm. What I could understand from her call was that all of them were together in one vehicle,” he said.
“I talked to my daughter about 11.30 am before they boarded the vehicle that was to take them (out of Tikrit). She told me that she was going to switch the phone off and would call again when they reached a safe place. After that we have no information except this report that some of them had got injured,” said Sasi, father of one of the nurses.
Jasmin Shah, general secretary of the United Nurses’ Association, said the nurses had informed him that some of them were hurt in the head.
“Some others had also suffered minor injuries. That is what they told me. They are going through dangerous areas and their voices reflected a feeling of hopelessness,” Jasmin said.
Jasmin said that 45 of the total 46 nurses who had been stranded in the Teaching Hospital in the conflict zone of Tikrit were Keralites and one was from Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu. “According to them, they were going along a road that was surrounded with gunfire and blasts,” Jasmin said.
Nurse Seona told a Kerala TV channel from Tikrit on Thursday morning that they could be moving out any moment. “They have asked us to move out. They are saying that they have to bomb the hospital building. What they are saying is that our presence there was causing difficulties to them in their war,” she said.
The regret for allowing his daughter to go to Iraq, with its long history of conflicts, was obvious in Sasi’s voice when he said he wanted her to come back at the earliest. “She had gone to Iraq to work in the Tikrit hospital just a year ago. All this happened just when she was trying to return home,” he said.
However, many of the nurses and their families are also anxious about their future after their return from Iraq because of pressing financial problems. Most of them had chosen to work in Iraq knowing about the risks involved because of these problems which included the question of repayment of loans they had availed for their studies.