Kashmir Group Delays Death for 5 Hostages

SRINAGAR, India — Muslim separatists holding five Western hostages in India’s troubled Kashmir region put off their threat to kill the captives Saturday, giving India two more days to agree to release 20 guerrilla leaders.

The little-known Al-Faran group said in a statement it was ready to consider appeals for the release of the hostages if human rights groups and the world community applied pressure on India to meet its demands.

But it reiterated its threat to kill the captives if its demands were not met by Monday. The earlier deadline had been Saturday evening.

Al-Faran, named after a mountain in Saudi Arabia that is holy to Muslims, released a photograph of the captives with eight masked guerrillas pointing assault guns at them.

“This [extension] of deadline has been done in response to appeals made by Amnesty International and other Western nations [groups],” the statement says.

The statement, handwritten in Urdu, was delivered to Reuters’ office in Srinagar, summer capital of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir.

“Al-Faran has expressed regret that in order to save the lives of five Western nationals, the entire world has become restless. But in Kashmir, thousands of innocents have been killed, hundreds of women have been raped, thousands of houses have been set ablaze. Yet the champions of human rights have remained silent spectators,” the statement says.

“The Muslims of Kashmir are unhappy over this discriminatory role.”

Guerrillas in the state have been waging a war for the past five years against New Delhi’s rule. India says Pakistan, which claims Kashmir, arms them. Islamabad denies the charge.

American Donald Hutchings, Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan, German Dirk Hasert and Norwegian Hans Christian Ostero were abducted in three separate incidents last week near Pahalgam, 55 miles from Srinagar.

John Childs, another U.S. citizen, escaped, but the captors said later they had released him on humanitarian grounds.

The state government issued a terse appeal Thursday and Friday to the group asking it to release the hostages unharmed but gave no indication about freeing jailed guerrillas. Last week it said it would not bargain with the militants.