The Taliban freed 12 of their 19 South Korean captives yesterday as the wrenching six-week hostage crisis in Afghanistan neared resolution.
The Islamic extremist movement handed over 10 women and two men to tribal elders in three separate releases several hours apart outside the central town of Ghazni. The aid workers were then driven to safety in Red Cross vehicles.
International Committee of the Red Cross representative Greg Muller confirmed that 12 hostages had been released and taken to the Red Crescent Society offices in Ghazni, 140km south of Kabul.
PHOTO: AFP
"They seem after six weeks in detention very much relieved which is a natural reaction after an extremely stressful experience," Muller said.
Many of the freed women were wearing colorful headscarves and some appeared to be in tears. They covered their faces as they were bundled into Red Cross vehicles. A bearded male hostage grinned broadly.
The freed hostages were among 23 Christian aid workers kidnapped by Taliban militants on July 19. Two male captives were executed by their captors and two female hostages were freed earlier this month.
The South Korean embassy in Kabul said the freed hostages were likely to be flown to the US military base at Bagram, north of Kabul, before leaving Afghanistan "as soon as possible."
Yesterday's releases came a day after the Taliban announced it would free all the hostages in the wake of South Korea's pledge to withdraw its military force from Afghanistan and ban missionary groups from the country.
The agreement came in face-to-face talks between Taliban negotiators and South Korean diplomats in Ghazni. The Taliban said the remaining hostages would likely be freed on today.
Amid speculation over whether a ransom was paid, both the Taliban and the South Korean government denied there was any secret deal.
"I strongly deny this. It's not true that money was involved," Taliban commander Qari Mohammad Bashir said.
The hostage-takers said on Tuesday it would take several days to free all the captives as they were in different areas.
News of the deal triggered tears of relief from their relatives who have been watching and praying for their lives since they were seized on a bus travelling from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar.
"I am extremely happy. I want to see them and hug them hard now," said Seo Jeung-bae, 57, whose son and daughter are among those being held.
"I had not doubted for one moment that the Taliban would return my children some day as the Taliban are also human beings and have their own families," he said at the suburban Seoul church where the Christian group was based.
The South Korean government promised to pull out its 200 troops in medical and engineering units from Afghanistan by the end of the year -- something it was already planning to do.
Also see story:
More than 100 Taliban killed in fierce fighting
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has