Taliban releases three South Korean hostages

Three South Korean women held hostage by the Taliban militants in Afghanistan have been freed after almost six weeks, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul confirmed today.

Kabul, Aug 29 : Three South Korean women held hostage by the Taliban militants in Afghanistan have been freed after almost six weeks, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul confirmed today.

Spokesman Cho Hee-Yong said that Ahn Hye-Jin (31), Lee Jeung-Ran (33), and 34-year-old Han Ji-Young would soon be handed over to the South Korean authorities in the country.

The Taliban released the three hostages on Wednesday, the first of 19 captives scheduled to be freed under a deal struck between the insurgents and the South Korean Government.

All released women were first handed to the tribal leaders, who took them to an agreed location where officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross picked them, a foreign news agency reported.

Earlier, South Koreans welcomed the news that the Taliban are set to release 19 hostages held captive for more than a month in Afghanistan.

South Korea's presidential office announced that the Taliban agreed to free the hostages on the condition that South Korea withdraws its troops and halts missionary activities in Afghanistan.

But a Taliban spokesman declined to comment on the announcement, saying only that negotiations were successful and the governor of the Afghan province where the hostages were seized said talks were still going on.

The announcement followed the resumption of negotiations, on hold for two weeks after the Korean side said it was unable to meet the kidnappers' chief demand to release Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan Government in exchange for the hostages, most of them women.

But despite the negotiations, the Korean Government had decided long before the hostage crisis to pull out its small contingent of engineers and medical staff from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

The Taliban held captive 23 Korean volunteers on July 19 from a bus in the Afghan Ghazni province.

Two of them were killed, but weeks later two were released as a gesture of goodwill after a first round of talks with South Korea.

ANI