Militants holding three UN workers hostage in Afghanistan offered Sunday to consider extending a three-day deadline for killing them. "Definitely there is a three-day ultimatum. If at the end of three days, if there are mediators who ask for extension of the deadline, then maybe we will think about it," Akbar Agha, commander of the Taleban splinter group Jaishul Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), told AFP.
"Maybe I will give an extension, maybe I won't."
Earlier Sunday the abductors set a deadline of midday Wednesday (0730 GMT) for foreign troops and the United Nations to quit Afghanistan and for the US to free all Taleban prisoners.
They threatened to kill the hostages if the demands were refused.
The militants have been holding three UN election workers from Kosovo, northern Ireland, and the Philippines since abducting them at gunpoint Thursday afternoon on a busy Kabul road.
The UN has confirmed that the three captives shown in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Sunday were their abducted employees.
"We can confirm the three people on the video are our collegaues," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told AFP.
"We are relieved that they appear to be unharmed and we call for their safe and immediate release."