By NNN-Afghan News
Ghazni (Afghanistan) : Negotiators were in touch Friday with the captors of four Red Cross workers, two of them foreigners, who were held in Afghanistan during a mission to free a German kidnapped by the Taliban.
Contact had been made with the group that seized the men on Wednesday in the province of Wardak, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Kabul, and military action had been ruled out to free the men, an Afghan official said.
“The Red Cross office advised us not use any military action for the safety of the kidnapped people and the issue must be solved via mediation through tribal elders,” said the governor of Sayed Abad district where they were taken.
“We are in contact with the kidnappers via tribal elders and influentials,” governor Anayatullah Mangal said. Mangal has said previously it was not clear who was holding the four.
The Red Cross workers did not return to Kabul on Wednesday after their mission in Wardak, where the 62-year-old German engineer and five Afghans were captured 10 weeks ago.
Besides the two Afghans, one of the men was from Myanmar and another from Macedonia, it said.
The incident comes after a string of abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan, some claimed by the insurgent Taliban movement and some blamed on criminals seeking ransom.
The Taliban reiterated Friday that it was not involved in the disappearance of the Red Cross staff.
A Bangladeshi national with a development organisation was abducted in Logar province, adjoining Wardak and Kabul provinces, on Sept 15 and has not been released.
Afghan police announced Friday, meanwhile, that they had freed two employees of the government’s rural development ministry who were abducted in the southern province of Nimroz with their driver 15 days ago.