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Eighteen S Koreans kidnapped from bus

Taliban gunmen halted a bus and kidnapped 18 South Korean passengers, including 15 women, as it was traveling a highway to Afghanistan's capital, the hardline Islamic militia said yesterday.

A South Korean church said it was checking to see whether the abductees were its members.

"We are investigating, who are they, what are they doing in Afghanistan," Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said.

SAFE AND SOUND

"After our investigation, the Taliban higher authorities will make a decision about their fate. Right now they are safe and sound," Ahmadi said, speaking on a satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

The Koreans were seized on Thursday from the bus as it traveled on the main road from the southern city of Kandahar to the capital Kabul, said Mohammad Zaman, the Ghazni Province deputy police chief.

"Maybe somebody tipped off kidnappers about the bus," Zaman said, adding he couldn't confirm how many South Koreans were aboard.

It was unclear what the Koreans were doing in Afghanistan. A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said Friday some Koreans may have been kidnapped, but did not provide more details.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported yesterday that the kidnapped Koreans were local members of the Saemmul Community Church in Bundang, just south of the South Korean capital, Seoul.

An official at the church confirmed 20 of its members were in Afghanistan for volunteer work, adding that the church was currently unable to reach them.

VOLUNTEERS

"The Foreign Ministry has informed us this morning that the abductees could be our church members, so we are trying to confirm it," the official said.

The group left South Korea last Friday and was to return on July 23, she said.

Thursday's abductions came a day after two Germans and five of their Afghan colleagues, working on a dam project, were kidnapped in central Wardak Province.

On June 28, another German man was kidnapped in western Afghanistan, but he was released.
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