KABUL, Oct 31: A breakaway Taliban group renewed threat to execute three UN hostages by midday Wednesday unless foreign troops and the United Nations leave Afghanistan and the US releases all Taliban prisoners.
The demands were issued on Sunday shortly before Al Jazeera broadcast the first images of British-Irish woman Annetta Flanigan, Kosovar Shqipe Habibi and Filipino Angelito Nayan in captivity.
The footage showed them huddled together terrified in an unidentified room.
"We can confirm the three people on the video are our colleagues," 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."
Jaishul Muslimeen said the hostages' governments would "witness the death of their nationals in three days" unless four demands are met.
"First, we want the UN to leave Afghanistan and we want them to condemn the attacks and invasion of Afghanistan by foreign forces," the group's spokesman, Mullah Mohammad Ishaq, told AFP by cell phone.
"Second, we want all those Afghans who have been arrested in Afghanistan and held in foreign prisons to be released immediately.
"Number three, we want Britain and Kosovo to withdraw their forces immediately from Afghanistan. And fourth, we want the Philippines to condemn the invasion of foreign forces in Afghanistan and to announce it as illegal. We give a three-day deadline which starts today, at midday (0730 GMT Sunday)," he said.-AFP
