Iraq militants were kind, gentle: Nurses

Achuthanandan Kuniyil, SNS, KOCHI, 5 JULY: Forty-six nurses held captive by Islamist militants in Iraq, reached Kochi today. They thanked chief minister Oommen Chandy and External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and all who helped them in their hour of crisis. 'I don't know how to express my happiness. I have no words to express it," said Ramya Jose, one of the nurses, who is from Cherupuzha, Kannur district. "It is our second birth, we never thought we would come back alive," she added.

As regards the ISIS militants, she said, "we can not call them militants, our experience has changed our conventional view about them. They were nice to us, gentle, kind and humane. Though they were dressed in black, and also armed, it appeared that they were good at heart."

"They treated us like their sisters,' said another nurse, Sumi Jose from Kothamangalam in Ernakulam district. "They never hurt us. They asked us last Tuesday and Wednesday to leave the hospital. We were afraid of them and replied with a no. On Thursday, they forcefully took us out of the hospital. They wanted to blow up the hospital without hurting us,” added Sumi.

"God Almighty has saved us. We never thought we would home alive and meet our families, in those nightmarish days the prayers of our dear ones kept us alive and brought us back home," said Sruthi S Kumar, another nurse from Puthuppally in Kottayam district. 'We are alive today only because of the militants. They aimed to blow up the hospital we were trapped in, but they wanted to ensure that the blast didn't kill us, so they forcefully evicted us. Not what we expected from them," said Veena Joseph, another nurse. "We are thankful to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj for helping to bring us safely back,' said Sona Joseph, her colleague.