KABUL - Taleban kidnappers shot dead a male South Korean hosage on Monday, a spokesman said, accusing the Afghan government of not listening to rebel demands for the release of Taleban prisoners.“We shot dead a male captive because the government did not listen to our demands,” spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by telephone. “We killed one of the male hostages at 6.30 this evening (1400 GMT) because the Kabul administration did not listen to our repeated demands,” he told Reuters by telephone from an unknown location.
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The shooting was a bloody rejection of the authoritiesÂ’ request for more time for talks on freeing the South Korean hostages after the expiry of a rebel deadline earlier in the day. The Taleban had earlier extended its Â’finalÂ’ deadline but insisted the release of Taleban prisoners was the only way to settle the crisis. The government had wanted the Taleban to first release the 18 women hostages, but the insurgents demanded the government release its prisoners first, leading to deadlock, said a Kabul-based Western security analyst who declined to be named.
The Taleban seized 23 Korean Christians, 18 of them women, 11 days ago from a bus in Ghazni on the main highway south from Kabul and killed the leader of the group on Wednesday after an earlier deadline passed.