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GHAZNI, Afghanistan: Afghanistan's Taliban said more of the 21 South Korean hostages could be killed "any time" after a Wednesday deadline expired and negotiators asked for a 48-hour extension.
The noon (0730 GMT) deadline was the latest in a series imposed since 23 hostages were seized two weeks ago. The militants have killed two of their captives – one late Monday after two other deadlines expired.
"After the deadline passed, one or more hostages could be killed any time," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP.
He said earlier there had been no progress in the negotiations in which the rebels have demanded that some Taliban prisoners be freed from Afghan jails.
One of the main negotiators, parliamentarian Mahmood Gailani, said tribal elders fronting the talks had asked for 48 more hours. "We are waiting for the answer," he said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of four Afghan court officials were meanwhile found on Wednesday in Ghazni province, where they were captured by the Taliban two weeks ago – around the same time and place the Koreans were seized.
"We killed them because they worked for the government," Ahmadi said.
The extremists, leading an insurgency after being removed from government in 2001, are demanding the freeing of least eight Taliban prisoners in exchange for the South Koreans.
Afghan authorities have rejected the demand after being condemned internationally for a similar deal in March.
Talks resumed on Wednesday, and there was no progress overnight, Gailani said earlier. Religious clerics among a delegation negotiating with the militants had "asked the Taliban to stop killing hostages", he said.
Negotiators also want the militants to unconditionally free 16 women in the group, two of whom a Taliban spokesman Tuesday described as gravely ill, before considering other possible demands.
The murder of the second hostage was widely condemned, including by UN chief Ban Ki-moon -- a former South Korean foreign minister -- the Arab League and Al-Azhar, the premier Sunni institution of learning, which is in Egypt.
Muslim-majority Malaysia and Human Rights Watch Wednesday added their calls for the 21 surviving Christians to be freed.
A 42-year-old pastor, who had led the church group that was captured while returning to Kabul from an aid mission to Kandahar province – the birthplace of the Taliban – was found dead a week ago.
Seoul, which has reportedly offered the Taliban a ransom that has been refused, has appealed for "flexibility" in negotiations with the Islamist group.
South Korean civic groups, political parties and relatives of the hostages have called for US involvement.
But a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said authorities should not bend to the demands of "terrorists" for fear of encouraging kidnapping.
"This shouldn't become an industry," Humayun Hamidzada told reporters on Tuesday.
There were also fresh fears for a German engineer held since July 18, a day before the South Koreans were captured, after Al-Jazeera television broadcast late Tuesday a video that it said showed him pleading for his life.
The footage was the first to show the engineer. The Taliban has said he has been ill and drifting in and out of consciousness.
The video showed a man it said was the German hostage standing in a rocky clearing with several men pointing guns at him.
There was no sound in the clip but the broadcaster said the captive called on Germany and the United States to pull their troops out of Afghanistan so that his life could be spared.
He was captured with a German colleague, who has since died in unclear circumstances, and five Afghans, one of whom escaped.
- AFP/so
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