'There is no justification for the international forces to rescue their own national and retrieve the dead body of their own soldier killed in action, but leave behind the dead body of Sultan Munadi in the area,' the statement said.

Munadi's bullet-riddled body was buried on the northern outskirts of Kabul Wednesday evening. Dozens of journalists laid flowers at his grave.

The two journalists were abducted Saturday while talking to local villagers in the Omarkhel area following a German military-approved airstrike conducted the previous day by a US jet. The district governor had said 130 people, some of them civilians, died in that attack.

The Afghan government, the United Nations and NATO are each conducting investigations in the area to find out what happened.