QUETTA, Pakistan, Aug 20, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistani authorities late Monday began handing over 21 freed hostages to Iranian officials after rescuing them from a kidnap gang who whisked them over the border the day before.

'The 21 recovered abductees are being handed over to Iranian officials and they are fulfilling formalities at an airbase near Quetta,' said the head of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps, Major General Salim Nawaz.

Nawaz told reporters the gang leader Sher Khan had been killed in the dawn raid by Pakistani security forces that freed the hostages.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Aug 13, 2007 (AFP) - The Red Cross has handed two South Korean hostages freed by the Taliban in Afghanistan to officials from the South Korean embassy, a Red Cross official told AFP Monday.

'We brought them to here to the Afghan Red Crescent compound where they were handed to Korean authorities,' International Committee of the Red Cross deputy head of delegation Franz Rauchenstein told AFP.