Body Found

The German newspaper Die Welt quoted witnesses as saying that dam engineer Rüdiger B., who suffered from diabetes, collapsed after he, another German and five Afghans were taken on a forced march in the heat. After lying on the ground for some time, he was shot.

On its Web site, the paper said that the kidnappers were not part of the Taliban insurgency but were Pashtun bandits. It said only an autopsy could show if Rüdiger, abducted Wednesday, was already dead when shot.

It said that German consular officials had spoken Sunday by telephone to the second German hostage.

The spokesman for the governor of Maidan Wardak province said the man had lost a lot of blood from the wound. The body was being taken from the central province to Kabul for further examination.

A provincial police chief said earlier that their forces had also located an Afghan who was still alive and had been kidnapped on Wednesday along with the dead German, one of two Germans abducted.

Germany will not be blackmailed

In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday in a television interview that Germany would not allow itself to be blackmailed by the Taliban.

"We are not going to respond to demands from the area of the Taliban," Merkel told the ARD public television. "We cannot be blackmailed."

Merkel's comments were made public before the program was aired.

She said she had "no new reliable information" regarding how the hostage died or on the whereabouts of the other man.

Claims of executions

Two German engineers along with their five Afghan colleagues were kidnapped on Wednesday in Jaghato district of central Maidan Wardak province.

Initially a Taliban spokesman had claimed on Saturday that they executed the two Germans along with five Afghans because Germany refused to meet the group's demands.

But later during the day, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that one of the two German died of extreme heat or a heart attack, and the second was still alive.

"Our forces found a dead body that they say belongs to a German engineer in Jaghato district and they are on their way to the center of the province," Mohammad Hewazali Mazloom, provincial police chief of Maidan Wardak told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

He said could not elaborate on the cause of his death, but said that Eshaq Noorzai, brother of Arif Khan Noorzai, Afghan parliament's deputy speaker was also with police.

Taliban had earlier said that they killed Eshaq Noorzai along with four other Afghans and two Germans on Saturday after the Taliban leadership council ordered their death sentence.

Unfolding events

In Berlin, officials said a German Foreign Ministry 24-hour crisis team continued to follow developments on Sunday amid public shock at the death of the aid engineer.

"The team remains in close contact with the Afghan government and is still trying to resolve this," a Berlin spokesman said.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had said on Saturday evening that it was assumed the kidnapped man had died of the "strains" from his ordeal and had not been directly murdered by the kidnappers.

A German Sunday newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, however, said that German officials had been able to obtain a preliminary view of the body and had seen gunshot wounds.

The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on that report.

Emphasis on reconstruction

Germany has some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan that are stationed mainly in the relatively peaceful north. Their primary job is to help with local reconstruction projects to revive education and commerce.

The German Development Aid Ministry has an annual budget of 100 million euros ($138 million) for bilateral aid to Afghanistan, with about 20 million euros going direct to the Afghan government construction fund.

The United States, Japan, Britain and Germany are the main donors in the country.

Some German troops are also deployed in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) against the Taliban.

In addition, Germany is leading EUPOL, a European Union mission to train and advise the Afghan police.