IHT : Taliban kill Korean hostage as demands go unmet

Taliban kill Korean hostage as demands go unmet

By Carlotta Gall | July 25, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan: The Taliban shot dead one of their 23 South Korean hostages on Wednesday after complaining that the government had not responded positively to their demands. The victim's body was brought to a United States military base in Ghazni Province, said an Afghan official negotiating with the Taliban captors for the hostages' release.

The official, Waheedullah Mujadeddi, said he was expecting eight hostages to be released Wednesday evening, but by late evening it was not clear if a transfer had occurred. He confirmed the death of a male hostage.

"I can confirm one of the hostages was very sick and there was no doctor or medicine, and the Taliban shot him," Mujadeddi said. He said he had learned the news directly from the group holding the hostages.

The South Koreans are members of a Protestant church group who were on a 10-day relief mission; most are women in their 20s and 30s, and some are nurses and teachers. They were abducted last Thursday while traveling on a public bus on the main highway from the capital, Kabul, to the southern city of Kandahar.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the kidnappers, said that a hostage was killed because the government had not agreed to an initial release of eight Taliban prisoners in exchange for eight Koreans.

"They do not pay attention and did not give a positive response," Ahmadi said, "so that's why we killed one Korean hostage." He gave the man's name and said he was killed in midafternoon in a desert area in the district of Qarabagh near the main highway.

The Associated Press, citing KBS, the South Korean public broadcasting network, reported from Kabul that the slain hostage was a 42-year-old pastor, Bae Hyung-kyu.

Ahmadi said more hostages would be killed in 10 hours if the government was not more cooperative.

In the morning, Ahmadi contacted journalists and said that the Taliban was running out of patience and would start to kill hostages if the government did not meet demands for 23 Taliban prisoners to be released and South Korean troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

The killing of the South Korean follows the death of a German engineer at the hands of kidnappers in the province of Wardak, near Kabul. Another German and four Afghans are still being held by those kidnappers.

The Taliban and other insurgents have often sought to abduct or kill foreign civilians to deter reconstruction and aid projects in Afghanistan and undermine the government. As a result, few foreigners travel on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar.