49 Turkish hostages held by ISIS released

Dozens of Turkish hostages abducted for months by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq were returned to Turkey on Saturday, ending the country’s most serious hostage crisis.

The 49 hostages had been seized in June from the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq when the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) conquered large swatches of Syrian and Iraqi territory.

{mosads}“The Turkish intelligence agency has followed the situation very sensitively and patiently since the beginning and, as a result, conducted a successful rescue operation,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the hostages, 46 Turks and three Iraqis, included Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz, other diplomats, children and special forces police.

Details of the hostages’ release were unclear, but Erdogan thanked Turkish intelligence officials in a statement on his website.

“I thank … every single member of the national intelligence agency from the director to the field operatives,” he said. “I congratulate them for their big success from the bottom of my heart.”