Taliban group threatens to kill UN hostages

"Our demand is the invader countries that these people belong to should withdraw their troops from Afghanistan and rethink their policies towards Afghanistan," Mullah Mohammad Ishaq, a spokesman for the Jaishul-Muslameen (Army of Muslims), told AFP by phone.

The abducted UN workers are a British-Irish woman, a Filipino man and a woman from Kosovo, a province of southern Serbia.

When it was pointed out to Ishaq that neither Serbia or the Philippines had troops in Afghanistan, he replied: "Their countries should condemn the invasion by other countries of Afghanistan.

"If they don't do so, we will kill the hostages."