Afghan Taliban rebels said they had killed two German hostages on Saturday, but an Afghan Foreign Ministry official said one of the Germans was still alive and the other had died of a heart attack. A Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf also said the militants would start killing the 23 Korean hostages they held if South Korea did not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and the Afghan government did not release Taliban prisoners.
The spokesman said the two Germans had been killed after similar demands over Taliban prisoners and for Germany to withdraw its troops had not been met. But Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen, citing Afghan security sources, denied the claim.
But Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper also quoted unnamed German government sources as saying Yousuf did not speak for the hostage takers. German intelligence sources told Bild the spokesman had nothing to do with the kidnappers, it said.
The German Foreign Ministry said it had received no independent confirmation that the hostages in Afghanistan, kidnapped on Wednesday, had been killed by the Taliban. Taliban spokesman Yousuf insisted the two Germans were dead.