A German engineer kidnapped by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan more than a month ago was shown pleading for help yesterday in a videotape broadcast on a local television station.
The man, who identified himself as Rudolf Blechschmidt, was shown lying on a black rug, clutching his chest and coughing. His captors were not featured in the footage.
"I am a prisoner of the Taliban," he said. "We live in the mountains, very high in a very bad condition, please help us," he said.
"The Taliban try to negotiate with the Afghan government, but the government [does] not talk with the Taliban and the Taliban tried to get in connection with the embassy to release us, but if the time is over they want [to] kill us," said Blechschmidt, speaking in English and lying on a ground sheet clutching his chest and coughing.
The video was broadcast on privately-owned Tolo TV.
The station did not say how it obtained the footage, and there was no indication of when it was shot.
Blechschmidt is one of two Germans and five Afghans the Taliban abducted in Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, on July 18, the day before the insurgents seized 23 South Koreans from a bus in neighboring Ghazni Province.
The other German suffered a heart attack soon after they were abducted and was then shot dead by his captors, who are demanding Berlin withdraw it's 3,300 troops from Afghanistan.
The German government has flatly refused to do so, but is under pressure from opposition parties and public opinion and faces a key vote in parliament next month on whether to renew the mandate for its force in Afghanistan.
"I ask my friends, my family and my two sons to increase the pressure on the German government agencies to get us free," added the 62-year-old hostage, speaking in German. "My medicine for my heart problem will have run out in three days' time. And the time, the time is running."
He said he was being held with five Afghans captured with him. One of the Afghan captives pleaded in the video for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to try to secure their release.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS