Kidnappers holding two Germans in Iraq have issued a second ultimatum, threatening to kill them unless Germany pulls its soldiers out of Afghanistan within the next 10 days, a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The ultimatum came in the form of a video posted by the kidnappers on the Internet. A similar demand, which gave the authorities a deadline of March 20, went unmet after the German government refused to be "blackmailed."

A crisis team was set up immediately to study the video, said the spokeswoman.

The video showed a German woman, who named herself as Hannelore Marianne Krause, apparently exhausted and begging for help. The 61-year-old woman, married to an Iraqi professor, was kidnapped in early February along with her 20-year-old son in Baghdad.

The woman represents a country which "stands in hostility with Islam and Muslims," said the kidnappers who called themselves "the Brigades of Arrows of Righteousness."

It is the third abduction of Germans in Iraq, despite Germany's vigorous opposition to the US-led war in 2003.

Some 3,000 German troops are deployed on a reconstruction mission in northern Afghanistan.

Source: Xinhua