Two Japanese freelance journalists were killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their vehicle south of Baghdad, their Iraqi driver told the hospital where the incinerated bodies were taken yesterday.
Hospital director Imad al-Maliki said the bodies were completely unrecognizable after the attack on Thursday afternoon, but the driver of the vehicle had told him they were the bodies of two Japanese freelance journalists.
Japan's foreign ministry, which confirmed the attack but said it did not know the fate of the Japanese, said the two involved were Shinsuke Hashida, a well-known 61-year-old freelance journalist, and his nephew, 33-year-old Kotaro Ogawa.
On Friday morning their gutted four-wheel-drive vehicle was still at the scene of the attack, its tyres burned off and its paintwork stained black by smoke. A single shoe lay in the back of the car.
Japan's top government spokes-man said the attack would not "greatly affect" Japan's existing contribution of some 550 ground troops to help rebuild Iraq, a move which divided Japanese opinion.
The journalists were returning from Japan's military base in the southern town of Samawa when they were attacked near the town of Mahmudiya, about 30km south of Baghdad, a spokesman for Japanese forces in Iraq told reporters.
They were travelling with a driver and translator, whose fate was not immediately clear.
The area around Mahmudiya is one of the most dangerous spots in Iraq with repeated insurgent attacks on US military convoys, foreign contractors and journalists in recent months.
Three weeks ago a Polish and an Algerian journalist were killed in a drive-by shooting on the same road. A CNN crew was attacked in the same area earlier this year, leaving two dead.
The deaths, if confirmed, would be the third and fourth of Japanese citizens in Iraq since the US-led invasion last year and the first since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sent troops. Two diplomats were killed in November when their car was attacked near Tikrit.
The latest incident will provoke furious debate in Japan but might not damage Koizumi's ruling coalition -- which faces an election for parliament's upper house in July -- given that the journalists had traveled to Iraq of their own accord, some political analysts said.
Tokyo financial markets were little affected.
Japan, a close US ally, has about 550 troops around the southern city of Samawa on a mission designed to help with reconstruction work. It sent the troops on a non-combat mission that is its riskiest military operation since World War II.
"Near Baghdad there are many areas where security is bad," said chief cabinet secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda. "But this is quite a different situation from Samawah ... I don't think this incident itself will greatly affect the military dispatch," he said.
Some Japanese say the troop dispatch violated Japan's pacifist constitution and many worry it has made the country more vulnerable to attacks at home.
Reports of worsening security conditions in southern Iraq have also raised questions about whether the dispatch still meets the requirement of a law passed last year which limits the soldiers' activities to "non-combat zones."
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS