Although Bangladeshis have been facing troubles in war-torn Iraq for a while, there is no need to evacuate them at this moment, said Expatriates’ Welfare Secretary Khandaker Showkat Hossain.
“There will be problems and we have to fight them,” he told the Dhaka Tribune over the phone yesterday, adding: “We are observing the situation in Iraq and our migrants have not run into insurmountable problems.”
Minister for Overseas Employment and Expatriates’ Welfare Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said earlier that the government would evacuate Bangladeshis if necessary. According to the ministry, some 25,000 Bangladeshis are working in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the bodies of two Bangladeshi siblings Md Milon and Md Swapan, who were killed in a missile attack at their residential camp in Benghazi, Libya on June 21, arrived home early yesterday. They were the sons of Abdul Kuddus, a resident of Shariatpur.
A Turkish Airlines flight carrying the bodies landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport around 5:30am, said Anwar Jahid, assistant director of the Wage Earners’ Welfare Board under the Ministry of Overseas Employment and Expatriates’ Welfare.
Md Mohsin Chowdhury, director of the Wage Earners’ Welfare Board, received the bodies at the airport and handed them over to their families.
The family was given Tk35,000 for each of the victims for burial, said Jahid.
An official of the Wage Earners’ Welfare Board said the situation in Libya was not good.
More Bangladeshis were killed there in the past, he added.
Khandaker Showkat, however, described the killing of the two siblings as an accident.
