ISIS Demands $200 Million from Japanese Government

The militant group ISIS has threatened to kill two Japanese hostages unless $200 million hands over them within 72 hours. but Tokyo vowed Tuesday it would not give in to "terrorism".

In a video posted online Tuesday, a masked man clad in black and holding a knife stands over two kneeling men in orange jumpsuits against the backdrop of a barren landscape.

The masked man links the threat against the two men's lives to Japan's support for the U.S.-led coalition that's fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

"Although you are more than 8,500 kilometers away from the Islamic State, you willingly volunteered to take part in this crusade," the man says, addressing his comments to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is currently visiting the Middle East.

The international community needs to "deal with terrorists without giving into them," Abe said at a news conference in Jerusalem after the release of the video. But he stopped short of explicitly ruling out the payment of a ransom or negotiations with the hostages' captors.

Abe, who is reorganizing his trip to deal with the hostage crisis, said he had ordered Japanese officials to do the utmost to try to save the two men. The Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said it was working to confirm the authenticity of the video.

The masked man in the video identifies the two kneeling men as Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa.

IS has murdered five Western hostages since August last year, but it is the first time that the jihadist group -- which has seized swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq -- has threatened Japanese captives.