Appeal for speedy end to South Korean ordeal

Ghazni: A female hostage among the remaining 22 Koreans held by Taliban fighters yesterday appealed for a speedy end to their ordeal, as a senior Afghan official said force may be used to free them if talks fail.

The woman, one of 18 female hostages among the South Korean Christian volunteers kidnapped in Afghanistan more than a week ago, spoke to Reuters on the mobile phone of a Taliban fighter.

"We are tired and being moved from one location to another," she said in broken Dari, one of the main languages in Afghanistan. "We are kept in separate groups and are not aware of each other. We ask the Taliban and the government to release us," she said. Pronunciation of her name could not be understood.

Taliban expressed impatience yesterday over talks to free 22 South Koreans it captured 10 days ago but government negotiators ruled out their demand for the release of prisoners.

A senior South Korean envoy meanwhile sought a meeting with President Hamid Karzai over the mostly female Christian aid mission kidnapped from a bus on July 19 as the extremist militia said most of the group was ill. "Seventeen of the hostages are sick. If anything happens to them, the Afghan government and the South Korean government will be responsible," spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said. "They have to speed up the process of releasing our prisoners."

The group has threatened to kill all 22 hostages if its demand for the release of eight Taliban prisoners was not met.

Three Natosoldiers killed

Taliban insurgents killed three Nato troops and an Afghan soldier in two clashes in Afghanistan, the alliance and an Afghan official said yesterday.

Two US soldiers from the Nato force in Afghanistan and the Afghan were killed on Friday in the eastern Nuristan province in a clash with Taliban rebels. The alliance said 24 insurgents were killed in the clashes, close to the border with Pakistan.

A British soldier in the Nato force was killed in another clash in the south of the country on Friday. He was the third British soldier killed in three days in the south, one of the main strongholds for the resurgent Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government sacked two provincial police chiefs for negligence, the Interior Ministry said yesterday, highlighting problems in a force often accused of corruption and which is key to security in Afghanistan.