Libya: Filipino medical staff freed

An envoy of the Filipino president to Tripoli, Libya has officially received a group of Filipino medical staff who had been detained by ISIS in Sirte.

The rescued detainees included seven women, a man and a 10-month-old child.

The medical staff was at the Ibn Sinai hospital in Sirte when they were detained by the terrorist group and then freed by government forces.

“When they found out we were Muslim they released us but under a strict condition that we will have to work as nurses in their hospital and we had to train ISIS on emergency care and nursing course. It was a horrible time. Each day we lived in fear. We didn’t know what was going to happen next, and they threatened to kill us if we left Sirte,“one of the nurses said.

For more than a year, ISIS exercised total control over Sirte, building its primary North African base in the coastal city.

The terrorist group was forced out of Sirte on December 2016 after a six-month campaign led by brigades from the western city of Misrata and backed by U.S. air strikes.