Two Taliban leaders and four South Korean officials met Aug. 10 to begin negotiations over the fate of 21 Korean Christians held hostage in Afghanistan by the Taliban since July 19.
According to The Associated Press (AP), Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said no more hostages would be killed until the meetings had taken place. Two of the original group of 23 Korean aid workers were killed soon after the kidnapping — Bae Hyung-kyu, 42, a minister; and Shim Sung-min, 29, a lay leader.
The Korean missions team, sponsored by Sammul Presbyterian Church near Seoul, was traveling on a charter bus from Kandahar to the country’s capital, Kabul, when armed men stopped it July 19 in the Ghazni province’s Qarabagh district. The volunteers had arrived in Afghanistan July 13 and were scheduled to return home July 23.
The captors have demanded repeatedly over the three-week period that the Afghan government and U.S. military release Taliban hostages in exchange for the Koreans’ lives, the AP reported.
At press time, meetings were still taking place and no other hostages had been reported killed. Afghan doctors had delivered medicine Aug. 6 to the ill among the group.
Back in South Korea, the government has issued guidelines to its aid organizations, telling them to leave Afghanistan by the end of the month for safety reasons, the AP reported.
(BP, TAB)
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