Iraq’s Ministry of Health has said on Sunday that it handed over the bodies of 38 Indian workers, who were killed by Daesh insurgents in Mosul, to the Indian Embassy in Iraq to be flown home later Sunday.  

AP reported the Indian Ambassador Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit said the bodies had been taken to Baghdad International Airport and would be flown back on a military flight, arriving in India on Monday.

India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, Vijay Kumar Singh, saluted the remains at the airport as workers loaded the caskets on the aircraft.

Singh condemned terrorism and expressed his government’s stance in fighting it.

“We are against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he told reporters, describing Daesh as “very cruel terrorist organization and our people have fallen to their bullets.”

Daesh abducted and killed the workers shortly after seizing the northern city of Mosul in the summer of 2014. 

Iraqi authorities discovered the remains in a mass grave last year after retaking Mosul, and positively identified the bodies last month, AP reported.