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Norwegian hostage beheaded: more to follow, says Al-Faran

SRINAGAR: Militants beheaded one of five Western hostages held since early July in troubled Kashmir and threatened to kill the others unless India freed jailed separatists within two days, authorities said on Sunday.

The head and body of Norwegian Hans Ostro were found dumped about 20 metres apart in a town southeast of Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, police said.

"We have found a dead body," a police official told Reuters in Srinagar. "It is the Norwegian." Ostro's head had been cut off, he said, and also dumped in the streets of Anantnag town.

The exact cause of death had not yet been determined, and his body was taken from the town, 60 km away, to a military hospital in Srinagar for an autopsy, they said.

Diplomats at the Norwegian embassy in the capital New Delhi could not be reached for comment.

Al-Faran, the shadowy group which abducted Ostro and the four other Western tourists in early July, left a note near Ostro's body claiming responsibility for his death, police said.

"The note said that if their demands are not met within two days, the other hostages will be killed, too," he said.

Al-Faran, which before the abductions was unknown even to Kashmiri separatist organisations, had earlier demanded that the Indian government release 21 jailed separatists in exchange for the hostages. They later lowered the demand to 15 separatists.

India has rejected any deal and demanded the unconditional release of the Western tourists, who in addition to Ostro included German Kirk Hasert, American Donald Hutchings and Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan.

Meanwhile, Kashmiri militant leader in Islamabad on Sunday condemned the beheading of one of five as a heinous act and demanded immediate release of four others.

"We condemn it with all force at our command," Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Amanullah Khan said in response to an Indian police report that the head and body of Norwegian Hans Ostoro had been found dumped in a town southeast of Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

"It is a heinous act," Khan told Reuters. He said the group responsible for this appeared to be acting at the behest of Indian authorities to damage what he called the Kashmiri freedom struggle. "No concientious Kashmiri can do it."

"It is some outside element which wants to damage our cause," said Khan.

"We have full sympathies with the Norwegian nation as a whole and the bereaved family in particular," he said.

The United States said on Sunday it was deeply concerned by the killing of a Norwegian hostage by Al-Faran militants in Kashmir and called for the release of the remaining four captives, including an American.

"We are deeply concerned by this news," a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in the Indian capital New Delhi told Reuters. "Once again we call on Al-Faran to release the hostages immediately and unconditionally."-Reuter