Koreans try for release of hostages in Afghanistan

KABUL, July 22 (Reuters) A South Korean delegation arrived in Afghanistan today to try to secure the release of 23 Koreans held hostage by Taliban guerrillas.

Their mission has an added sense of urgency after a Taliban spokesman said the militants had killed two German hostages today after Berlin refused to yield to demands for it to pull its troops out Afghanistan.

The spokesman said insurgents would start killing the Korean hostages if South Korea did not agree to pull its 200 military engineers and medics from Afghanistan by 0800 IST and the Afghan government did not release all Taliban prisoners.

A South Korean embassy official said the team of eight officials included a deputy foreign minister, special advisor to the president and Foreign Ministry diplomats.

The team is expected to hold talks with Afghan authorities and perhaps with the Taliban who abducted the Korean Christians on Thursday from a bus in Ghazni province southwest of the capital, Kabul.

The 23 Koreans belong to the ''Saemmul Church'' in Bundang, a city on the outskirts of the South Korean capital, Seoul.

Most of them are in their 20s and 30s and include nurses and English teachers. Yonhap News Agency said they were providing only free medical or educational services with no missionary intentions, echoing what President Roh Moo-hyun said in a nationally televised speech yesterday.

The Koreans are the biggest group of foreigners kidnapped so far in the Taliban campaign to oust the US-backed government and force out foreign troops.

German authorities have cast doubt on the authenticity of the Taliban spokesman and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said analysis suggested one of the German hostages was alive while the other had died of ''stress and strain''.

The area south of Kabul where the Germans and Koreans were seized this week has seen a marked escalation of violence in the last month as Taliban militants have moved in from the south.

Residents say government troops only hold the major towns and much of the countryside is beyond their control.

REUTERS SG ND1246