Latest Taliban deadline looms for ‘exhausted’ hostages

AFGHANISTAN: A captive South Korean aid worker made a desperate appeal for help as the hours ticked down Friday to yet another Taliban deadline in the Afghanistan hostage crisis.

Taliban militants extended until midday Friday (0730 GMT) the deadline to negotiate the release of the remaining 22 kidnapped South Koreans now in their ninth day of captivity.

The Islamic militants are insisting on the release of eight Taliban prisoners held in Afghanistan in return for the aid workers’ freedom, although Seoul has said the rebels’ demands are “considerably fluid and not unified.”

The militants agreed to the new deadline — which comes two days after the previous “final deadline” — following a request from the Afghan government, Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP from an unknown location.

The move came as one of the hostages made an emotional plea for help in a telephone interview with US television network CBS.

“We are in a very difficult time. Please help us,” said the woman, whom CBS said gave her name as Yo Cyun-ju, after the interview shown Thursday organised by a Taliban commander.

“We are all pleading for you to help us get out of here as soon as possible. Really, we beg you.”

“All of us are sick and in very bad condition,” she said, begging Seoul and the international community to make a deal with the Taliban to win their freedom.

She went on to describe her captivity as a “very difficult life every day,” and “a very exhausting situation,” CBS reported.

One of the South Korean hostages has already been killed.

South Korea named him as 42-year-old Bae Hyung-Kyu, a Presbyterian pastor and the head of the mostly female aid mission based at a Seoul church, which was reportedly in the country to provide free medical services.

The rebels said they killed him because talks with the Afghan government and South Korean officials had stalled.

Waheedullah Mujadadi, the head of the Afghan government delegation negotiating the hostages’ release, confirmed the new deadline and added “we are trying with all of our ability to win the safe and sound release of the South Koreans.”

The South Koreans were seized while travelling on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar last Thursday in Ghazni province about 140 kilometres (90 miles) south of Kabul.

The Taliban have also demanded that Seoul withdraw its 200 troops serving with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. South Korea responded by saying it would pull them out as previously scheduled by the end of the year.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s special envoy is to arrive in Afghanistan later Friday and will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to try and resolve the crisis, Yonhap news agency reported.

The militants are also holding a hostage from Germany, and has demanded the withdrawal of all German forces from the war-torn country as well, as the rebels step-up their use of kidnap as a negotiating tool.

Ghazni, Friday, AFP