Guenter Pleuger, a deputy at the German foreign ministry, says the foreign aid workers contacted their Pakistani lawyer after Sunday night's attack on Afghanistan by the U.S. and Britain. They are all well, Pleuger said, but "the situation is clearly more dangerous" after the military action.

"The aid workers are now evidently being relocated daily to foil attempts to free them," reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and they are being allowed to communicate with their families via fax machine and the occasional phone call. Reuters reports that a fax from Australian hostage Diana Thomas said they were able to cook their own meals and order takeout food from a Kabul restaurant.

Numerous reports say American Heather Mercer, 24, is psychologically unhealthy and worried about being killed. In a recent fax to her mother, she begged the U.S. government not to attack Afghanistan. "All eight of us want to live," she wrote. Her lawyer, Atif Ali Khan, said the Taliban had called a doctor for her. "She is not taking it too well, she is young," Khan said Saturday. "When we left she completely broke up and did not want us to leave."

Her father, John Mercer, has ...