ICRC says two Korean hostages freed

Families of the hostages have appealed for their release Keystone

The Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has facilitated the release of two South Korean hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The two women were among 23 South Koreans kidnapped by Taliban militants on July 19. Two male captives were executed at the end of July.

The ICRC handed the freed women over to a South Korean delegation in the town of Ghazni, around two hours southwest of the capital Kabul.

“The ICRC is relieved that the two hostages have been released and that they can now rejoin their families back home,” said Reto Stocker, head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul.

The organisation said it was hopeful that the remaining 19 hostages would also be released in the near future.

The ICRC facilitated direct talks over the weekend between Korean negotiators and the militants.

A series of meetings between the two sides took place at the provincial headquarters of the Afghan Red Crescent in Ghazni.

The release of the two women was expected after the governor of the Afghan province where the Koreans were abducted said two sick female hostages would be released today “as a gesture of good faith”.

“We provided a neutral place for the negotiations between the Korean negotiator and the Taliban, but we were not inside the room,” Jean-Pascal Moret, ICRC communications coordinator for Afghanistan, told swissinfo.

Sick hostages

The ICRC, which has been in Afghanistan since 1987, was involved in transporting freed French and Italian journalists a few months ago.

Moret added that the Geneva-based organisation has been asking rebels detaining the hostages to let the Koreans send Red Cross messages to their families.

The Taliban have threatened to kill the remaining hostages, most of them women, unless a similar number of Taliban prisoners are freed in exchange.

The Afghan government has refused to give in to the demand, saying that would just encourage more kidnapping.

swissinfo, Adam Beaumont with agencies

ICRC in Afghanistan

The ICRC’s main delegation is in Kabul, with sub-delegations in Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad. There are ICRC offices in Gulbahar, Faizabad and Bamyan. It has 1,179 staff, including 62 expatriates, in the country.

Between January and June this year ICRC protection teams visited 68 places of detention, which were holding a total of 9,356 detainees. They provided assistance to 154 released detainees to travel home.

Since 1988 the ICRC has been involved in orthopaedic and rehabilitation assistance to disabled people, from landmine victims to those with motor impairment from other causes. Around 78,200 patients (including more than 32,300 amputees) have been registered and assisted.

Last year, the ICRC aided 14 medical facilities across Afghanistan which treated nearly 35,000 patients, of whom more than 1,700 had suffered wounds inflicted by weapons – including 240 men, 252 women and 322 children injured by mines or other explosive remnants of war.