A week after 46 Indian nurses evacuated from Iraq by the Indian Embassy returned home, 29 more nurses who had been working in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala arrived at Kochi airport on Saturday.
Of them, 10 had been working in one hospital while the others were in different hospitals in other cities in the Diyala province. All of them hailed from Kerala. The Indian Embassy, which paid their travel expenses, had taken them to Baghdad and put them on a flight to Sharjah.
A few other nurses returned on their own via Kuwait.
Kerala associations in United Arab Emirates and Kuwait extended help to the nurses as well the construction workers returning from Iraq. Authorities say that as the situation in Iraq is getting worse, more Kerala nurses will be arriving in the next few days.
The first batch of 46 nurses, which included one hailing from Tamil Nadu, arrived in Kochi on July 5 by a special flight arranged by the External Affairs Ministry.