Afghanistan's Taliban killed one of the 23 Korean hostages yesterday after Kabul failed to free Taliban prisoners, a spokesman for the group said, adding insurgents would kill more if their demands were not met.
"Since Kabul's administration did not listen to our demand and did not free our prisoners, the Taliban shot dead a male Korean hostage," Qari Mohammad Yousuf said by phone from an unknown location.
Eight of 23 South Korean hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan were then released late yesterday, Yonhap news agency said, quoting an unidentified government official in Seoul.
A presidential spokesman could not immediately confirm the report.
The hostages were to be moved to a safe zone and then flown back to South Korea after a medical check-up, Yonhap said.
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan set 2030 GMT yesterday as the last deadline for its South Korean hostages, a spokesman said after reporting the group had shot dead one of the 23 captives.
"If the administration of Kabul is not ready to release our hostages, then by 1am [local time] the rest of the hostages will be killed," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said by telephone from an unknown location. "That time is the last deadline."
Taliban insurgents had threatened to kill some of the South Korean hostages they are holding by yesterday afternoon if eight Taliban prisoners were not released by the Afghan government.
"The deadline has already expired. We will kill some of the Koreans today by 2pm [0930 GMT] if we don't see any developments in the negotiations," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone.
Finally, the Taliban lived up to the threat.
The kidnapping of 23 aid workers by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has sparked soul-searching in South Korea's Protestant churches, which had been highly active in sending missions abroad.
The Korean hostages, 18 of whom are women, are members of a Presbyterian church, although the government and church officials have stressed they were engaged in aid projects and not on missionary work.
The Middle East Team, a pan-Christian group, said yesterday it had decided to call off or suspend plans to send seven teams this summer to Islamic countries including Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.
"Following the kidnapping, three teams have decided to call off their planned trips while four other groups have postponed theirs," said Dohn Kim, director of the Middle East Team.
Each team is composed of some 10 to 20 volunteers and they typically stay about 10 days doing humanitarian work.
"The incident alerted us that we should refrain from doing things with high risks," he said.
A South Korean man who was captured by Iraqi insurgents and killed in a highly publicized case in 2004 was a member of the Middle East Team, he said.
That killing caused an exodus of Korean evangelists from Iraq, he said.
In August last year Kabul expelled around 1,500 South Korean evangelical Christians who visited for a "peace festival" amid concerns that their presence could spark violence.
The Korean hostages were abducted last Thursday while traveling by bus from Kandahar to the capital, Kabul. The volunteers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, left on July 13 to work in hospitals and children's homes.
However, newspapers and concerned citizens have questioned the wisdom of Christians traveling to dangerous destinations, even for aid work.
The foreign ministry says it warned groups months ago not to go to Afghanistan.
The abduction prompted the government to add Afghanistan to Iraq and Somalia as no-go countries. Under a rule set to be approved on Friday, unauthorized travel is punishable by up to one year in prison or stiff fines.
South Korea -- with East Asia's largest Christian population after the Philippines -- has 16,600 evangelists in 173 countries, according to the Korea World Missions Association.
This is the world's second largest number after the US.
Some experts say that South Korean Protestant churches often misconstrue the sheer number of evangelists sent overseas as a measure of their devotion to spreading Christianity or the scope of their influence.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS