KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghan clerics and tribal elders on Friday intensified negotiations for the release of 22 South Koreans kidnapped a week ago by the Taliban, as the latest of several deadlines set by the militants approached.

Talks with the captors went until late Thursday and resumed early Friday morning, said Ali Shah Ahmadzai, police chief of Ghazni province where the hostages were taken. The body of one hostage – riddled with bullet holes – was found Wednesday.

“Everything is going very well,” he said.

But another official involved in the negotiations said talks were difficult because of conflicting demands by the South Koreans’ captors.

“There are still a lot of problems among them,” police chief Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi of the Qarabagh district in Ghazni said Friday.

“One says, ‘Let’s exchange them for my relative,’ the others say, ‘Let’s release the women,’ and yet another wants a deal for money,” he said earlier.

Mr. Ahmadzai said the Taliban had told negotiators the hostages were being given food and water, and that their health was fine.

In Seoul, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the South Korean government believed there was no serious problem with the hostages’ safety, and that it was trying to deliver them medicine and daily necessities. The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing protocols, said the government is “maintaining multisided contacts” with the hostage-takers.

The Taliban on Thursday reiterated their demand that jailed militants be freed in exchange for the captives it seized on July 19, and set the latest of several deadlines – Friday at noon, local time – for the condition to be met or more hostages would be killed.

One of the group of abducted Koreans, 42-year-old pastor Bae Hyung-kyu, was found slain with multiple gunshots on Wednesday in Qarabagh.

Local tribal elders and religious clerics who have respect among the people of Qarabagh have been conducting negotiations by telephone with the captors for several days.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the hard-line Islamist Taliban, said they had been contacted by Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister, Maj. General Muhammad Munir Mangal, who said the government would make a decision regarding the militants’ demands by noon Friday.

“If Kabul administration does not solve our problem … then we do not have any option but to kill Korean hostages,” Mr. Ahmadi said.

“The Taliban are not asking for money. We just want to exchange our prisoners for Korean hostages. … When they release the Taliban, we will release the hostages,” Ahmadi said by phone from an undisclosed location.

The Taliban at one point demanded that 23 jailed militants be freed in exchange for the South Koreans. It is not clear now how many militants the Taliban want freed or which ones.

Mr. Ahmadi said the hostages were being held in small groups in different locations and were being fed “the same food that our villagers have – bread, yogurt, rice.”

The South Koreans, including 18 women, were kidnapped while on a bus trip through Ghazni on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, Afghanistan’s main thoroughfare.

Their church said the abductees were not involved in any Christian missionary work in Afghanistan, and had provided only medical and other volunteer aid to distressed people in the war-ravaged country. It said it will suspend some of its volunteer work in Afghanistan.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it supports efforts to free the South Koreans.

“What should happen is that these people should be released, unconditionally, immediately and unharmed, back to South Korean authorities, so they can return back to their families,” he said.