23 hostages, 18 of whom are women, taken at gunpoint while working in hospitals doing humanitarian work in one of the world’s poorest countries. Students of the religion of peace do what they do best:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban militants claimed they shot and killed one South Korean hostage on Wednesday while a group of abductees was freed and taken to a U.S. military base, officials said.

Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed that one of the hostages had been shot and killed around 4 p.m. (7:30 a.m. EDT), and a police official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation said militants told him the hostage was sick and couldn’t walk and was therefore shot.

The story goes on to say that the Taliban freed some of the hostages, and those freed have been moved to a nearby US base. None of this is confirmed.

Now back to your round-the-clock Lindsay Lohan marathon.

More: Compare and contrast.

Update: Seoul may have ransomed some of the hostages with “huge amounts of money.” If true it was an understandable action, but unwise. The Taliban knows that the South Korean government is a mark for barbaric fund raising and will abduct its citizens again. And again.

Update: For what it’s worth.

‘We killed one of the Koreans today because the government is not being honest in talks,’ Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.

The Taliban had earlier threatened to start killing the Koreans who are being held in the southern province of Ghazni by 2:00 pm (0930 GMT) if eight Taliban prisoners were not released by the Afghan government.

Ahmadi offered no proof of the claim and it could not be independently verified. His claims last week that another German hostage had been killed proved to be untrue.

Update (AP): They weren’t bluffing.

The bullet-riddled body of a South Korean hostage was found by police Wednesday in central Afghanistan after a purported Taliban spokesman said the militants had killed one of the captives.

The male victim had 10 bullet holes in his head, chest and stomach, and was discovered in the Mushaki area of Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, said police officer Abdul Rahman.

The Taliban spokesman said earlier that the hostage was was killed because Afghan authorities hadn’t met their demands to release other militants from prison.