New Delhi [India], Mar 20 (NT): External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday confirmed that 39 Indians, who went missing in Mosul in Iraq in the year 2014, have been killed.

Speaking at Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj said that the dreaded terror outfit Islamic State (IS) had killed all the Indian nationals as ANI reported.

In July last year, Swaraj had confidently said in the Parliament that she would not declare the 39 Indians dead without concrete proof or evidence.

"It is a sin to declare a person dead without concrete evidence. I will not do this sin,” EAM Swaraj said in a statement in the Lok Sabha in 2017.

Earlier, India had asked Iraq for assist in locating the missing Indians after Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from IS.

The 39 Indians, most of whom belong from Punjab, were working on projects near Mosul, when they were kidnapped during the mass departure.

One of the captured Indians, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur, had managed to run away and had claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others. But the government discarded it as NDTV reported.

More than 10,000 Indians escaped Iraq amid the surge in hostility in 2014, including dozens of nurses who were held momentarily by suspected ISIS terrorists in Tikrit and Mosul before being permitted to return home. (NT)