KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A purported Taliban spokesman said the militants' deadline for the lives of 22 South Korean hostages had been extended three hours into late Monday afternoon, but that if militant prisoners weren't released by then some of the captives would be killed.

The spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Taliban commanders extended the deadline until 4 p.m. (1130 GMT) because a delegation of Afghan officials had requested more time for negotiations. The Taliban are demanding that 23 prisoners be released from Afghan jails.

"If the government doesn't start to release the prisoners then, we're going to start killing the hostages," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by satellite phone.

Several purported deadlines passed last week with no consequences, though on Wednesday the militants shot to death one captive several hours after a deadline passed.

Marajudin Pathan, the governor of Ghazni province, where the South Koreans were abducted on July 19, said that authorities talked to the Taliban on Sunday after they set the latest deadline and asked for two more days of talks.

"Fortunately, they did not reject our demand outright, but said that they need to talk to their leaders," Pathan said.

Because of the previous deadlines, it wasn't clear how seriously the militants would treat their latest ultimatum for the 22 remaining South Koreans.

The attempts to free the South Koreans come after President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials tried to shame the Taliban on Sunday into releasing the 18 of the captives who are women by appealing to a tradition of cultural hospitality and chivalry.

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."

But the Taliban spokesman instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan women 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."

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