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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan : Taliban rebels in Afghanistan killed one of their 23 South Korean hostages on Wednesday, officials said, and set a "final deadline" for the government to meet demands for a prisoner swap.
Police found the bullet-riddled body of the Korean, one of a group of Christian aid workers, a few hours after the rebels said they had executed him because talks to secure the release of eight insurgent prisoners had stalled.
"We killed one of the Koreans today because the government is not being honest in talks," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
The police chief of Ghazni province, where the Taliban are holding the Koreans, said the badly-wounded body was dumped in a remote area several miles from the nearest road.
"Yes, we've recovered the body. It had 10 bullet holes," police commander Alishah Ahmadzai said.
As tensions mounted, the head of the government delegation negotiating the release of the Koreans, Waheedullah Mujadadi, said the Taliban had opened fire on him in a buffer zone between Taliban and government-controlled areas.
"I managed to escape the attack. They were trying to kidnap me as well or kill me," he said.
The militants - who were ousted from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces in late 2001 - set a deadline of 2030 GMT on Wednesday for Afghan authorities to accede to their demands for the release of the jailed Taliban fighters.
"We call on the South Korean government, parliament and its people to pressure the Afghan government to accept our demands or we'll kill more hostages after the deadline passes," Ahmadi said.
An Afghan governor and the Taliban both denied a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified government official in Seoul, that eight of the Koreans were freed on Wednesday.
"Talks continue but no one has been freed so far," said Ghazni governor Mirajuddin Pattan. Rebel spokesman Ahmadi said the claim was "government propaganda."
South Korean and Afghan officials earlier travelled to Ghazni to lead efforts to free the Koreans, the biggest group of foreigners to be abducted during the Taliban's nearly six-year insurgency.
Any prisoner exchange would run counter to President Hamid Karzai's pledge not to allow the practice after his government in March freed five Taliban militants in exchange for an Italian reporter.
A fresh hostage crisis was defused on Wednesday when Taliban rebels freed a Danish journalist and his Afghan companion several hours after abducting them overnight in eastern Kunar province bordering Pakistan.
Officials earlier said the reporter was German.
"I was in a house and there was a brief exchange of fire. Following the exchange, armed Taliban took me," Khawja Najibullah, a Dane of Afghan origin, told reporters after his release.
"I told them 'I am a Muslim, I pray.' Then they freed me," he added.
Provincial governor Shalizai Didar said the pair were abducted after they travelled to the restive Watapour district to report on a NATO-led air strike which killed several Afghan civilians some two weeks ago.
"They were freed with no conditions through the power and cooperation of peace-loving local elders," Didar said.
A German hostage, one of two kidnapped in the south of the country last Wednesday, remains in the custody of the Taliban. The rebels say he is seriously ill and slipping in and out of consciousness due to diabetes.
The bullet-riddled body of the other German was dumped by a road on Sunday.
The Taliban have demanded the release of 10 prisoners for the sick German and four other Afghan hostages, but have not set a deadline related to that group of captives.
The Taliban have previously called for South Korea and Germany to pull their troops out of the country but the issue has not figured in their most recent set of demands.
Seoul has repeatedly said it will withdraw its 200 troops serving with a US-led coalition in Afghanistan by the end of the year. Berlin has about 3,000 soldiers in the central Asian nation under NATO command. - AFP/de
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