Taliban: We take care of our Muslim brother

Hasan Onal, the Turkish road engineer who was abducted Thursday, was in “good health,” said Kurtulus Ergin, the Kabul manager of the Turkish company Gulsan-Cukurova which employed Onal.

Onal’s Taliban captors threatened to kill him before the end of Sunday unless the prisoners were freed. Late Sunday, however, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said he had information that the rebels had lifted the two-day time limit.

“There are indications that he won’t come to any harm. We are making every effort to rescue our citizen without him being harmed,” Gul told the Anatolia news agency in Ankara.

Onal and his Afghan driver were abducted Thursday while returning by car to a camp for construction workers repairing the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The driver was freed on Friday with a ransom note demanding the release within 48 hours of Taliban prisoners being held in the southern province of Ghazni.

Among the captives whose freedom was being sought was Syed Muhammed Shahid Khaila, a high-ranking official during the five-year Taliban regime before it was ousted by a U.S.-led military campaign in December 2001.

On Sunday, Afghan officials said Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces were trying to find Onal. Turkish officials were in contact with Afghan and U.S. authorities, and also have asked for Pakistani help.

“The Turkish government has approached us,” said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan on Monday. Khan told reporters that while neighboring Pakistan was willing to assist, Afghan authorities were responsible for freeing Onal because he was kidnapped on their territory.

Onal had been working since June on a 52-mile section of the 300-mile highway contracted to Gulsan-Cukurova.

The road project is one of the most high-profile engineering operations undertaken by the interim Afghan government and is financed mostly by the United States. U.S., Turkish and Japanese companies are working on the highway.

The project has been plagued by Taliban attacks. Four construction workers were killed at the end of August. Earlier this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended travel after one of its workers, Ricardo Munguia, a 39-year-old water engineer, was killed on a stretch of the road in Kandahar province.