Germans, Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 21 (UPI) -- Taliban rebels claimed to have killed two German hostages, while the Afghan government says one remains alive and the other died of a heart attack.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the hostages were shot and killed because the German government ignored the radical Islamic group's orders to withdraw Germany's 3,000 troops from Afghanistan, BBC News reported Saturday.

Within hours of that announcement, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said its sources had determined one of the two engineers was alive and the other had died from a heart attack, the BBC reported.

The two Germans and five of their Afghan coworkers were kidnapped Thursday while working on a dam project in the Wardak province.

The Taliban also threatened to kill at least 18 South Koreans kidnapped Friday from a bus in Ghazni unless South Korea withdrew its 200 troops from Afghanistan, the BBC reported.

The Koreans' bus was en route from Kabul to Kandahar. It was the largest abduction of foreigners since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.