KABUL, 21 July 2007 — Taleban militants kidnapped at least 18 South Koreans, including 15 women, at gunpoint from a bus, and a purported spokesman for the group said yesterday they would be killed unless Seoul pulled its troops from Afghanistan.
A South Korean church said it was checking to see whether the abductees were its members.
“They have got until tomorrow (Saturday) at noon to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, or otherwise we will kill the 18 Koreans,” Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taleban, told The Associated Press.
South Korea has about 200 troops serving with the 8,000-strong US-led coalition.
Earlier, Ahmadi said the Taleban were trying to determine who the Koreans were and what they were doing in Afghanistan before the militia’s higher authorities decide what to do with them. “Right now they are safe and sound,” Ahmadi said, speaking on a satellite phone from an undisclosed location.
The Koreans were seized Thursday in Ghazni province, as they were traveling from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar, said Ali Shah Ahmadzai, the provincial police chief.
The bus driver, released late Thursday, said there were 18 women and five men on the bus, Ahmadzai said. The discrepancy in figures could not be immediately clarified.
Several dozen Taleban fighters stopped the bus and drove it into the desert before abandoning the vehicle and forcing the group to walk for about one hour, Ahmadzai said.
The driver was handed over to local villagers, while the fate of the Koreans remains unknown, he said. Before arriving in Kabul, the group was in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that some 20 South Koreans were kidnapped in an area near the capital Kabul on Thursday afternoon.
Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong, however, did not release details on exactly how many were kidnapped or by whom.
“The government plans to exert every possible effort so that our kidnapped citizens can return safely as soon as possible,” Cho told reporters in Seoul.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported yesterday that the kidnapped Koreans were members of the Saemmul Community Church in Bundang, just south of Seoul. An official at the church confirmed 20 of its members were in Afghanistan for volunteer work, adding that the church was currently unable to reach them.
Thursday’s abductions came a day after two Germans and five of their Afghan colleagues, working on a dam project, were kidnapped in central Wardak province.
Ahmadi said the Taleban were holding the two, and threatened to kill them if Germany did not withdraw its troops serving in the NATO-led force. “If German troops do not pull out of Afghanistan within the next 24 hours, we will kill these two Germans,” Ahmadi said.
