AFGHANISTAN:Taliban insurgents freed seven remaining South Korean hostages in Afghanistan yesterday after a six-week kidnap ordeal, following a deal which Afghan officials said included a ransom payment by Seoul.
The four women and three men were handed over in two batches to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ghazni province in southeast Afghanistan, from where the Taliban seized 23 Christian volunteers on July 19th.
It was the largest case of abductions in the resurgent Taliban campaign since US-led troops ousted the Islamists from power in 2001.
"I can see one Korean man and two women getting inside an ICRC car," a witness said after dusk outside Ghazni town as the last batch of three were handed over to the ICRC. "That is it, there are no more Korean hostages." Reporters were not allowed to speak to the released captives.
The Taliban killed two male hostages last month, but later agreed to release 19 others they were still holding after Seoul agreed to pull all its nationals out of the insurgency-wracked central Asian country.
Some Afghan officials say South Korea agreed to pay a ransom during negotiations with the Taliban, which one foreign diplomat said started out as a demand for $20 million (€15 million).
The South Korean government was praised at home yesterday, but some said Seoul may have set a dangerous precedent in directly negotiating with the Taliban.
A spokesman for South Korea's president, Chon Ho-seon, was evasive in responding to questions at a news briefing in Seoul on Wednesday on whether a ransom was part of the deal, saying only that South Korea had done what was needed.
Meanwhile, the Afghan defence ministry said yesterday that a Taliban insurgent leader, Mullah Brother, was killed yesterday in a US-led raid in the southern province of Helmand.
Brother served as a top military commander for the Taliban government until its removal from power in 2001 and was a member of the movement's leadership council, headed by fugitive Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Mullah is a title for a Muslim cleric that many senior Taliban use. It was not clear if the name Brother, which other Taliban leaders have used to refer to him, was a nom de guerre.
Taliban members were not immediately available for comment and there was no independent verification of the ministry report.
The raid was launched after Taliban insurgents ambushed an Afghan army convoy between Sangin and Sarwan districts of Helmand, the ministry said in a statement.