Afghanistan’s Taliban movement said on Saturday it had killed the second German hostage after the group’s demands were ignored, a spokesperson for the militant group said.
”The mujahideen also shot dead the second hostage,” Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by phone from an unknown location.
He said the Taliban had yet to decide about the bodies of the pair who the group killed at two different times on Saturday following the expiration of two separate deadlines.
The couple were shot dead in Ghazni province which lies to the south-west of the capital, Kabul.
The German Foreign Ministry said it had received no independent confirmation that any of the hostages in Afghanistan had been killed by the Taliban.
”We are taking these statements very seriously,” German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Martin Jaeger said in a statement. ”So far we have no independent confirmation that a hostage was murdered in Afghanistan.”
He said Berlin was in constant contact with the Afghan government.
The two unidentified Germans along with six Afghan colleagues were kidnapped at gun point while travelling in a vehicle on Wednesday in Wardak province which also lies to the south-west of Kabul.
German media said the two men were engineers being escorted by their Afghan colleagues when they were taken away.
The Taliban demands were withdrawal of German troops serving under Nato in Afghanistan and the release of all Taliban prisoners held by Kabul
Before the executions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a newspaper interview published on Saturday said there was no question of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
”We can’t give up our efforts now,” she was quoted as saying in an interview with Passauer Neue Presse newspaper. ”The Afghan people can’t be abandoned.”
A German Foreign Ministry spokesperson earlier said that Berlin had received no clear evidence that the two Germans were in the hands of the Taliban.
At the beginning of July a German was taken hostage and then freed after a week. In October 2006 two German journalists were murdered in the relatively stable northern part of the country where there are over 3 000 German troops stationed as part of a Nato peacekeeping force.
The Afghan government said it was not aware of the reported executions of the German hostages.
Korean hostages
A day after kidnapping the Germans, the Taliban seized a group of Korean Christians travelling in a bus in Ghazni province which has in recent months seen unprecedented level of violence since Taliban’s ouster in 2001.
The Taliban said they would also decide later on Saturday the fate of 23 Koreans which include women mostly.
The kidnapping of the Koreans is the biggest group of foreigners seized so far in the militant campaign to oust the Unite States-backed government and force out foreign troops from the country.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun called for the release of hostages, saying they were medical volunteers.
”We understand the kidnapped South Koreans have been doing medical volunteer services,” Roh told a news conference in Seoul.
”The kidnappers must release our people as soon as possible, and safely. In any case, valuable lives should not be damaged.”
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official had said on Friday about 20 South Korean Christian volunteers were feared to have been kidnapped by Taliban insurgents.
Last year, the South Korean government tried to stop a group of 2 000 Korean Christians travelling to Afghanistan for a peace conference, fearing for their safety.
But 900 of them still came to Afghanistan, causing an uproar in the staunchly Muslim country — where many accused them of being evangelical missionaries — before they were all deported.
South Korea has no combat troops in Afghanistan, but has a contingent of 200 engineers, doctors and medical staff. Roh said they would remain in Afghanistan until their mission was complete.
”The troops in Afghanistan are non-combatant, doing medical and support work. They have been trying to treat hundreds of people everyday and help reconstruct Afghanistan by building welfare facilities and bridges, and their mission is nearing an end,” Roh said. – Reuters