KABUL (AFP)
Afghan police rescued a female German aid worker in a dramatic pre-dawn swoop Monday but efforts to free 19 South Koreans and another German held captive for over a month remain deadlocked, officials said.
The interior ministry said a criminal gang motivated by money was behind the weekend kidnapping of Christina Meier in the Afghan capital Kabul.
"They had demanded a big sum; about a million dollars," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told reporters.
"Initial investigations indicate that this group is a criminal gang and their main aim on this issue was to get money."
"We located the house where she was kept. We surrounded the house and called on the kidnappers to surrender to police. They came out one by one and surrendered and then we freed the hostage. She's fine," Police colonel Ghulam Rasoul said.
Meier -- who was seized at gunpoint in broad daylight on Saturday at a Kabul restaurant -- was taken to the German embassy in the capital.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the abduction as "a criminal act and an un-Afghan act," his spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said.
Her kidnapping, the latest in a string of such incidents involving foreigners, had stoked fears of a drawn-out hostage crisis with one of her apparent captors, his face covered, using a video released on Sunday to demand the release of jailed Afghans in exchange for her freedom.
The Taliban has also been insisting on a prisoner release in exchange for the Korean Christian aid workers it has been holding since July 19. Face-to-face talks over hostages failed Saturday.
A source involved in mediation between the Taliban and the South Korean officials said the Koreans Monday sent a delegation of tribal chiefs to persuade the Taliban into a solution.
The US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly refused to bow to the Taliban demand -- chiefly the freedom of jailed Taliban in return for the Koreans.
The militants killed two men in the 23-member group shortly after they were seized in insurgency-plagued south Afghanistan.
The Taliban released two female hostages a week ago after opening direct talks with South Korean officials, but 19 remain in captivity.
The extremists are also still holding a German man, Rudolph Blechschmidt, 62, who was kidnapped with a colleague on July 18 in Wardak province.
The other German man collapsed a few days later and was shot dead. |
