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Turks celebrate return of IS held hostages

Turkish nationals held hostage by IS for over three months in Iraq were freed early Saturday morning and have returned home
Relatives of Turkish hostages who had been held by IS militants run toward the plane to meet their loved ones (AA)

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has addressed crowds of well-wishers gathering to welcome home the 49 Turkish hostages released by the Islamic State (IS) on Saturday.

“This is the time to celebrate. This is the time to thank Allah,” he said from an open-top bus in the Turkish capital Ankara. He said Turks had “deeply felt the pain of a separation and the fear of what will happen next.”

“We have been thinking about them day and night for three months. They were in our imaginations. They never faded away from our eyes. We always thought about them,” he told crows at the Esenboga airport on Saturday afternoon.

Davutoglu said Turkey had a duty to welcome refugees fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq.

“The ones who cannot go back to their homeland and their homes… about one and a half million Syrian refugee brothers… the Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Yezidis, Christians, all our friends and brothers, who will look after them? This is the time to take care of them. This is the time to look after those orphans.”

The recently appointed prime minister had earlier announced the release of the Turkish hostages, after they had been held by the IS for more than three months.

"Early in the morning our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back into our country. At 5:00 am (0200 GMT) they entered the country," Davutoglu told reporters during an official visit to Azerbaijan, adding that all were in good health. 

IS jihadists kidnapped the 49 Turks, which included diplomats, children and special forces, from the Turkish consulate in Mosul on 11 June as they captured swathes of northern Iraq.

Davutoglu had cut short his Baku trip to meet the hostages in the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border.

Television footage showed a bus in Sanliurfa carrying the hostages and a motorcade accompanying them. 

The circumstances of their release were not immediately clear, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan released a written statement, saying the Turkish authorities had carried out a "pre-planned, detailed and secret operation." 

"It continued all through the night and was successfully completed in the early morning. From the very first day, our intelligence agency has followed the issue with patience and determination and finally carried out a successful rescue operation."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told private Haberturk television that the hostages had been brought to Turkey via the Syrian border. 

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (C) and wife (L) are with the relatives of freed 49 Turkish consulate hostages released by ISIL Saturday

"We have started the day with great news. Hope we will never experience something like this again." 

Freed Turkey's Consulate in Mosul Ozturk Yilmaz (C) hugs his daughters after being released by IS

On his Twitter account, he thanked "all those who contributed to the release of the hostages," especially the spy chief Hakan Fidan.

Last month, the Taraf daily reported that Ankara was in talks with the IS to hand over a historic tomb it controls in Syria in exchange for the hostages. The foreign ministry denied the report.

Foreign ministry sources told Anadolu Agency that no ransom was paid and there were no conditions linked to the hostages’ release. The unnamed sources added that negotiations for the hostages’ release were “conducted by overseas-based Turkish intelligence,” without providing any further details.

AA said they were held at eight different locations during their captivity and that five previous attempts to secure their release failed “due to conflicts in the region.”

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