TOKYO—Japan is doing all it can to free two hostages the Islamic State group is threatening to kill unless it receives $200 million, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday, vowing never to give in to terrorism.
Abe returned to Tokyo from a six-day Middle East tour slightly ahead of schedule and convened a Cabinet meeting soon after.
“We are fighting against time, and we'll make an all-out effort and use every diplomatic route that we have developed to win the release of the two,” he said.
Abe said he was consulting with leaders in the region. A convoy carrying Japanese Vice-Foreign Minister Yasuhide Nakayama left the embassy in Jordan’s capital Amman on Wednesday for an unknown location in the city. Jordan’s King Abdullah II later met with him, according to Jordan’s Petra News Agency.
The Islamic State group demanded the $200 million ransom in a video posted online Tuesday that showed a knife-brandishing masked militant standing over the kneeling captives. It gave a deadline of 72 hours, which the video’s release time suggests would expire sometime Friday.
