Remaining South Korean hostages still alive, Taliban says
Last Updated: Thursday, July 26, 2007 | 1:53 AM ET
CBC News
The remaining 22 South Korean hostages are alive, a Taliban spokesman and an Afghan police chief said Thursday, a day after the body of one captive was found riddled with bullets.
"They are safe and alive," Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the militants, told Reuters by telephone from an unknown location. "They [the Afghan government] have given us hope for a peaceful settlement of the issue."
General Ali Shah Ahmadzai, provincial police chief of Ghazni province, where the hostages are being held, also told Reuters that he believed the hostages were safe.
"I was awake all night and if the Taliban had killed any of them I would have known," he said. "No, they have not killed any of the hostages and we are trying to contact the Taliban for resumption of talks."
The South Korean Christians are pictured before leaving for Afghanistan on July 13.
(Sammul Church/Associated Press)
On Wednesday, the body of one of the male hostages was discovered in the Mushaki area of Qarabagh district in Ghazni province with 10 bullet holes in his head, chest and stomach.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry identified the victim as 42-year-old Bae Hyung-kyu, the chief of the Korean Foundation for World Aid, a non-governmental organization.
Earlier, Ahmadi said the hostage was shot and killed around 4 p.m. local time (7:30 a.m. ET) after negotiations to free the captives stalled. He also set a final deadline of Thursday at 1 a.m. (4:30 p.m. ET Wednesday), after which the remaining hostages, 18 women and four men, would be killed.
A police official said militants told him the hostage was sick and couldn't walk and was therefore shot.
Rev. Bae Hyung-kyu, one of 23 South Koreans kidnapped by the Taliban, poses for a photo before leaving for Afghanistan on July 13.
(Sammul Church/Yonhap/Associated Press)
The South Koreans were captured at gunpoint from a bus in Ghazni province on July 19. They were en route to Kandahar when their bus was hijacked about 160 kilometres from Kabul.
Unnamed Western officials said Wednesday that some of the remaining 22 hostages had been freed and taken to a U.S. base in Ghazni. The officials said they did not know how many had been freed, but South Korean news agency Yonhap put the number at eight.
Marajudin Pathan, the governor of Ghazni province, denied the reports and said the militants were still holding the remaining hostages.
"No one has been released, and there has not been any exchange," Pathan told the Associated Press. "They are still in Taliban custody."
He said authorities were in contact with the kidnappers to try to secure the Koreans' freedom. The militants gave a list of eight Taliban prisoners they want released in exchange for eight of the hostages, Pathan said.
The report of the death came after the passing of an earlier deadline, also announced by Ahmadi, which he said was set after the Afghan government failed to respond to the militants' demands.
It was reportedly the fourth deadline set by the Koreans' Taliban captors since they were abducted last week.
Afghan security forces have surrounded a region in Ghazni province where about 70 armed militants are thought to be holding the hostages. The Taliban have warned any use of force by government troops will put the hostages at risk.
The insurgents reportedly extended their previous deadline so they could negotiate directly with officials from the South Korean government.
South Korean officials have said they'll remove the contingent of military engineers and medics at the end of the year, as originally planned.
Though some of Ahmadi's statements turn out to be true, he also has made repeated false claims, calling into question the reliability of his information.
Conflicting reports over German reporter
Earlier Wednesday, the provincial police chief said he thought talks to free the Korean hostages had been on a positive track and said the new threat was a surprise.
"I don't know why they've suddenly changed their mind," Ali Shah Ahmadzai said. "My message to the Taliban is to use tolerance and be patient. This [killing hostages] is against the Afghan culture."
Meanwhile, there were conflicting reports Wednesday about whether a German journalist and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped the day before in eastern Afghanistan.
An Afghan governor was quoted as saying that the three were released Wednesday after being abducted in Kunar province, but the German magazine Stern told Reuters that the reporter had contacted them and told them at no point were he or his colleagues taken hostage.
The fate of other foreign hostages is unclear. Two German engineers and five Afghans were kidnapped last Wednesday from southern Afghanistan. There were conflicting reports on whether one of the German hostages was killed.
With files from the Associated Press
