US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to offer large bounties for information on Taliban leaders if the reports of American hostages being held are confirmed.
“I have just learned that the Taliban are holding more American hostages than is being reported. If true, we will need to immediately place a very large bounty on their key leaders, perhaps even larger than we placed on Osama bin Laden“, Rubio wrote in X.
The US State Department chief did not specify where the information about the hostages came from. He did not explain under what conditions the rewards could be paid.
The Taliban-ruled government of Afghanistan said earlier this week that it had exchanged American citizens in the country for an Afghan serving a life sentence in the United States.
Osama bin Laden was the leader of the terrorist group al-Qaeda. U.S. authorities offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture or destruction. Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 at his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in a U.S.-led operation.