Taliban hostage rescue begins

A MILITARY operation to rescue the remaining 21 Korean hostages held by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has begun hours after a Taliban deadline expired, a provincial official said.

“The operation has started,” said Khowja Seddiqi, the district chief of Ghazni's Qarabagh district, where the Taliban kidnapped 23 Korean Christian volunteers nearly two weeks ago.

He did not give more details or say which forces were involved.

Any attempt to rescue the hostages is fraught with risk, as the kidnappers have split the 18 women and three men into small groups and are holding them in different locations across the mainly flat terrain.

The Taliban could not be immediately be contacted, but spokesmen for the radical Islamist movement have repeatedly said any use of force would jeopardise the lives of the hostages.

Earlier the army had dropped leaflets warning civilians of an assault.

“The national army has dropped leaflets from helicopters telling people in several districts to evacuate their houses because it wants to launch an operation,” Khowja Seddiqi, district chief of Qarabagh, in Ghazni province, said.

The Taliban have killed two male hostages after the Afghani Government refused to bow to rebel demands to free jailed insurgents.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan - A Taliban deadline for the lives of the remaining 21 South Korean hostages passed today with a purported militant spokesman saying none had been harmed, while the Afghan army dropped leaflets in the area warning residents of an upcoming military mission.

The military said the mission was weeks away and wasn't connected to the hostages, denying media reports claiming a rescue attempt had been launched.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press after the noon deadline passed that the remaining 21 hostages were still alive, though two female hostages were very sick and could die from illness.

On Tuesday, Afghan police found the body of a second hostage slain since the church-group volunteers were seized two weeks ago. Ahmadi had said eight militant prisoners, including some held by the United States at its Bagram base, had to be released by noon or more hostages would die.

Today, Ahmadi said Mullah Omar, the Taliban's elusive leader whose whereabouts are not known, had appointed three members of the Taliban's high council to oversee the hostage situation and they would have the power to order them slain at any time.

The Taliban has extended several previous deadlines by hours or days. However, the militia has killed two South Korean male captives several hours after two previous deadlines.

South Korea said it would send a parliamentary delegation to the United States to seek cooperation in resolving the crisis, and relatives of the hostages pleaded for help at Washington's embassy in the South Korean capital.

The 23 South Koreans were kidnapped while riding a bus on July 19 on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. They are the largest group of foreign hostages taken in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that drove the Taliban from power.

Afghan National Army helicopters, meanwhile, dropped leaflets in Ghazni province -- where the South Koreans were kidnapped -- warning people of an upcoming military operation.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said the leaflets were dropped in order to avoid civilian casualties. "This operation has no relation to the Korean kidnapping case," he said.

"In order for you to be safe and not be affected by the operation, we call on you to move to secure government-controlled areas," the leaflets warned.

The South Korean government and family members reiterated their opposition to any military attempt to free the hostages.