Missing Hikers Shot to Death in Afghanistan

Two Germans who disappeared nearly three weeks ago while hiking in the Hindu Kush mountains were shot to death, a police general said today. A rescue team reached the bodies in the late afternoon after a four-hour trek on foot from the main road, and found the two men with bullet wounds in their chests; it's not clear when they died. Police at the scene said they could not recover the bodies because of darkness and would try again in the morning.

The two bodies were inside cloth sacks under a large boulder about 2.5 miles from the south end of the Salang Pass, where the men began their hike on Aug. 19. The area is not a Taliban area, and is inhabited mostly by nomadic shepherds who live in tents. (More Afghanistan stories.)