Jazeera TV airs video of Taliban's Korean hostages

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Jazeera broadcast a video on Monday showing several of the South Korean hostages held by Afghan Taliban insurgents hours after the group announced the killing one of them.

At least seven women wearing head scarves appeared in the footage, four sitting on the ground and the rest standing next to men in Afghan robes, apparently militants.

The face of one Asian man also wearing a traditional Afghan attire was shown, but it was not clear if he was a hostage or an insurgent.

The women looked unharmed in the short, unstable video.

"Al Jazeera obtained footage showing the Korean hostages held by the (Taliban) movement from a source outside Afghanistan," a Jazeera news anchor said. He did not elaborate.

The video was filmed in a dark environment, possibly in a room. Jazeera did not broadcast the sound track, but said an off-camera speaker was reading a statement without reporting its content.

Earlier in the day a Taliban spokesman said the kidnappers had shot dead a male South Korean hostage because the Afghan government was not listening to rebel demands for the release of Taliban prisoners.

The Taliban seized 23 Korean Christians, 18 of them women, 11 days ago from a bus in Ghazni on the main highway south from Kabul and killed the leader of the group on Wednesday after an earlier deadline passed.

The spokesman said the Taliban would kill more hostages if Kabul ignored their demand to release rebel prisoners, but gave no new deadline.