Hostages not fine

GHAZNI – South Korea and the United States agreed yesterday not to use force to free 21 Korean hostages in Afghanistan, but Afghan troops warned villagers of a possible offensive in the area where the captives are held.

The Taliban kidnapped 23 South Korean Christian church volunteers, 18 of them women, in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, two weeks ago and later killed two of them. The hardline Islamist guerrillas threatened to kill the rest unless their jailed comrades were freed.Most of the hostages are sick and two of the women were seriously ill and could die, the Taliban said, adding that it lacked the right medicines to treat them.A team of private Afghan female and male doctors said yesterday they were travelling to Ghazni to try to treat the captives but had yet to obtain the Taliban’s permission.South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met on the sidelines of a regional security forum in the Philippines yesterday.”They agreed that both countries will not use any kind of force,” a South Korean diplomat said.The body of Shim Sung-min, 29, the second South Korean hostage to be shot, was expected to arrive home later yesterday.His family said it would hold a funeral and then donate his remains for medical research.The remaining 21 hostages were still alive, a Taliban spokesman said on Wednesday, but warned they might be killed if the Afghan government did not free insurgent prisoners.The government has refused to give in to the demand, saying that would only encourage further abductions.The Taliban have also warned that any attempt to rescue the hostages by force would put the captives’ lives at risk.The Afghan Defence Ministry said army helicopters had dropped leaflets in several districts of Ghazni province on Wednesday warning residents to move to secure areas to avoid casualties during an operation to be launched in the ‘coming weeks’.Nampa-ReutersintThe hardline Islamist guerrillas threatened to kill the rest unless their jailed comrades were freed.Most of the hostages are sick and two of the women were seriously ill and could die, the Taliban said, adding that it lacked the right medicines to treat them.A team of private Afghan female and male doctors said yesterday they were travelling to Ghazni to try to treat the captives but had yet to obtain the Taliban’s permission.South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met on the sidelines of a regional security forum in the Philippines yesterday.”They agreed that both countries will not use any kind of force,” a South Korean diplomat said.The body of Shim Sung-min, 29, the second South Korean hostage to be shot, was expected to arrive home later yesterday.His family said it would hold a funeral and then donate his remains for medical research.The remaining 21 hostages were still alive, a Taliban spokesman said on Wednesday, but warned they might be killed if the Afghan government did not free insurgent prisoners.The government has refused to give in to the demand, saying that would only encourage further abductions.The Taliban have also warned that any attempt to rescue the hostages by force would put the captives’ lives at risk.The Afghan Defence Ministry said army helicopters had dropped leaflets in several districts of Ghazni province on Wednesday warning residents to move to secure areas to avoid casualties during an operation to be launched in the ‘coming weeks’.Nampa-Reutersint