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GHAZNI, Afghanistan : Afghanistan's Taliban set the government a new deadline of noon (0730 GMT) on Wednesday to meet its demands in order to save 21 South Koreans, a day after a second hostage was killed.
The hardline Islamic militia wants the government to free at least eight Taliban prisoners in Afghan jails, a demand negotiators have rejected.
"If our demands are not met by then, we will start killing the rest of the South Koreans," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP.
The bloodied corpse of the second hostage to be killed since 23 were kidnapped nearly two weeks ago was found on Wednesday in the southern province of Ghazni, about 140 kilometres south of Kabul.
The body was dumped in a field just off a main road, with his hands tied and bullet wounds to the head.
South Korea's foreign ministry identified the victim as Shim Sung-Min, 29, as the country reacted with outrage.
"The Korean government strongly condemns and urges an immediate end to these heinous acts of killing innocent people in order to press for demands that it can't meet," the presidential office in Seoul said.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon also deplored the killing and voiced deep concern about the safety of other captives held by the Taliban.
"These hostages include many young women who came to help the people of Afghanistan and they should not be made part of the conflict in that country," he was cited as saying by his press office.
South Korean media reports said Shim had quit his job at a Seoul IT company two months ago to become a teacher to the disabled at a Seoul church which had then sent him to Afghanistan on an aid mission.
The body of pastor Bae Hyung-Kyu, 42, who had been leading the group on the mission to the risky south, was found in the same area last Wednesday.
In Cairo, the Arab League and Al-Azhar, the premier Sunni institution of learning, also condemned the killings and called for the immediate freeing of the remaining hostages, 16 of them women.
A Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday two female hostages were gravely ill.
"Their condition is very bad. We don't have enough medicines - maybe they will die," Yousuf Ahmadi said, pressing negotiators to agree to his organisation's demands so the women could be released.
The South Korean government meanwhile called for "flexibility" to save the 21 captives.
But a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said the Taliban's demands should "as a principle" not be accepted.
If the government continued "responding positively to their request and to the demands of the terrorists, we'll face more problems," Humayun Hamidzada said. "This shouldn't become an industry," he said.
Five Taliban prisoners were freed from jail in March in a widely criticised deal that saved an Italian journalist kidnapped by the insurgent group.
Analysts warned the exchange could encourage kidnapping by militants and criminals alike. Karzai vowed then that such swaps would not be repeated.
The Taliban is also holding a German engineer and four Afghans who were kidnapped in Wardak province near Kabul a day before the South Koreans. It has also demanded the release of prisoners to save the German's life.
Government negotiators said talks continued over the South Koreans on Tuesday but there had been little movement.
"Taliban are not responding very nicely," Mahmood Gailani told AFP. "We are hopeful to find a solution, but it's very difficult."
The hardline group was driven from government in late 2001 and is leading an insurgency against Karzai's administration that has already left around 3,000 people dead this year, most of them rebels.
It claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Kabul on Tuesday that police said killed an Afghan truck driver and wounded three US soldiers. - AFP/de
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