KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban set a new midday Monday deadline for the lives of 22 South Koreans, warning the Afghan government to release some of its captured fighters or else hostages will die.

The Taliban last week set several deadlines that passed without consequence, and it wasn't clear how seriously the militants would treat their latest ultimatum for 22 remaining South Korean hostages, including 18 women. A leader of the South Korean group was shot and killed last week.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the militant group had given a list of 23 insurgent prisoners it wants released to government officials, and if they weren't freed by noon (0730 GMT) Monday, some hostages would be killed.

"It might be a man or a woman ... We may kill one, we may kill two, we may kill one of each (gender), two of each, four of each," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by satellite phone from an unknown location. "Or we may kill all of them at once."

From President Hamid Karzai on down, Afghan officials Sunday tried to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives, an attempt to tap into a tradition of cultural hospitality and chivalry.

Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom.

In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted on July 19, Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests," especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam.

"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his office.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women, children or elders.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it."

A former Taliban commander and current lawmaker who has joined the negotiations, Abdul Salaam Rocketi, said the government policy was that the "women should be released first."

But the Taliban spokesman instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan females at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, and the Taliban can do the same. He said the Taliban could detain and kill "women, men or children."