South Asia News

Another Korean hostage killed, Taliban spokesman says (4th Roundup)

Jul 30, 2007, 20:55 GMT

Kabul - A second South Korean hostage has been killed by Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, the militant group claimed Monday. The hostage, who was among 23 members of a South Korean church group kidnapped earlier this month, was killed at 1800 local time (1230 GMT), Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yusif Ahmadi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. His claim could not be independently verified. Ahmadi later told South Korean news agency Yonhap that the Taliban would continue to kill the other hostages if its demands were not met. He said the Taliban would first kill the group's men, before beginning to kill the women, and described Monday's killing as the first phase of consecutive executions. Ahmadi had earlier told dpa that if the Afghan government did not give in to the Taliban's demands for eight of its members to be released from Afghan jails by 4 pm (1130 GMT), the Taliban would start killing the remaining 22 South Korean hostages. Shortly before the expiration of the Taliban's Monday deadline the Afghan government had asked the rebels for two more days. Earlier, Ghazni province Governor Mehrajudding Patan had said the kidnappers had told a mediation group that they accepted a government demand to extend the deadline on their demands until Wednesday. The Taliban seized 18 South Korean women and five men, all members of the Saemmul Community Church, on July 19 in the southern Ghazni province en route from Kabul to the southern province of Kandahar. The pastor leading the Christian group, Bae Hyung Kyu, was shot dead last week. His bullet-riddled body was found on July 25, the day of his 42nd birthday. Bae is survived by his wife and a nine-year-old daughter. His body was flown back to Seoul on Monday. His brother Shin Kyu said there would be no funeral service until the other hostages had safely returned home. One of the female hostages pleaded for help from the government in Seoul in a telephone interview published in Monday's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. 'We are sorry to have caused this trouble. We want to get out of here as soon as possible,' Lee Ji Young, 34, was quoted as saying. 'Don't worry too much about me,' she also said in a message to her parents. Lee had to consult with the kidnappers during the telephone interview that was conducted with a journalist on Sunday evening, the newspaper reported. Lee said that the group of 22 South Korean hostages had been divided up - she was with three others - and that they were frequently moved from place to place. She did not know the fate of the other hostages, she said, while saying that most of the time she had spent 'eating and sleeping.' 'We have not been threatened in any specific way,' Lee said. JoongAng Ilbo said Lee had been in Afghanistan since 2006 to teach children how to use computers. She was working as an interpreter for the abducted church group from South Korea. Previously, government negotiators had suggested that the kidnappers were divided among themselves about whether to seek the release of Taliban prisoners or to demand ransom money. But Ahmadi denied this Monday. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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NoharnessJul 30th, 2007 - 21:04:21

If your faith demands that you respond to good and kindness by someone outside your faith with evil and violence, what have you placed your faith in? If you are so fearful that someone doing good can lead others away from your faith, how strong is your faith? It is hard to have faith in evil, isn't it? In truth, the weakness of all religions is revealed in this. When one lays claim to faith as being the reason for his actions, then he has abandoned reason, and without reason there can be no reasonable discussion. Without reasonable discussion, one can only resort to the use of force, and so we are witness to the clash of people who believe themselves to be doing good. One group offers itself up for immolation and the other is happy to do the immolation.

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TWO EVILS FIGHTINGJul 30th, 2007 - 21:47:34

The evil colonial powers are at fight with local evil satanic followers, who claim to be Muslim, BUT THEY SHOW NO MUSLIM CHARACTER AT ALL. Claiming alone does not work. It is not like in Christianity a priest tells a lie, ''You are saved'' and people become happy, a false sense of scurity!

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JimJul 31st, 2007 - 02:58:15

What an utterly evil creature the taliban is. Their god is a murderer by proxy? Hell awaits these souless maggots.

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Another Korean hostage killed, Taliban spokesman says (4th Roundup)

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