Mar 10, 2007, 9:43 GMT
Cairo - Kidnappers holding two Germans in Iraq threatened Saturday to kill their captives unless Germany withdraws its troops from Afghanistan within ten days.
One of the hostages, a 61-year-old woman, made a tearful plea for help to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a video posted by the abductors on an Islamic website.
'We're Germans as well,' sobbed the woman, who is married to an Iraqi. 'They'll kill us otherwise,' she added.
The two hostages were seized on February 6 by armed men who burst into their family home in Baghdad.
The woman was wearing a loosely tied headdress in the video. Crouching next to her was her son, who is in his twenties.
One of the kidnappers read out a message on behalf of a group calling itself the Brigade of the Arrows of Righteousness.
'We Muslims are one large nation,' he said. The Muslims in Afghanistan are therefore just as close as the Muslims in Iraq, he added.
At the beginning of the video, the abductors showed the passports of the two hostages on which their names were clearly visible.
The German government declined to comment on the kidnappers' demand for a pullout from Afghanistan were Germany has 3,000 troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin said a crisis team set up after the kidnapping was examining the latest information.
The government has in the past imposed a news blackout on the abduction so as not to compromise efforts to obtain the release of the two hostages.
Media reports said the woman was married to an Iraqi and had lived in Iraq for decades.
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