A Japanese security worker taken hostage in Iraq is believed to be still alive, the government said, but the security firm he works for said it fears he may have died of wounds suffered in the ambush that led to his capture.
The US military has collected several bodies from the ambush site in Hit, west of Baghdad, but the missing Japanese citizen, Akihito Saito, 44, was apparently not among them, a Foreign Ministry official said.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on its Web site Monday that it ambushed a group of five foreign contractors, killing four of them and that the fifth one -- Saito -- was seriously injured and taken hostage.
Late Wednesday, international security firm Hart GMSSCO, which has employed Saito as a consultant at the company's Baghdad office, said an eyewitness reported that the contractor suffered fatal wounds in Sunday's ambush. The firm said in a statement on its Web site that it has not given up hope that Saito may still be alive. "However an eyewitness report indicates that wounds sustained at the time of the incident may have proved fatal," it said.
Hart's London-based press office also described details of what appeared to be a well-orchestrated ambush on the convoy Saito was helping escort west of Baghdad.
"The ambush was complex and well planned, incorporating the use of multiple improvised explosive devices, rocket propelled grenades, machine gun fire and small arms fire," the statement said.
Japan's government says the kidnapping -- which it still has not definitively confirmed -- would not affect the deployment of its 550 troops in southern Iraq on a humanitarian, non-combat mission. The kidnappers are not known to have made any demands for a withdrawal. But Tokyo has called on the US military, Iraq, Jordan and Syria for help in winning Saito's release.
"We are determined to do our best to rescue him as soon as possible, if his kidnapping is true," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a parliamentary session on Wednesday.
Saito's family has backed the government's decision not to withdraw troops, but his younger brother Hironobu expressed concern on Wednesday about his health condition.
"It sounds like he is injured, but we have no idea how serious his conditions are and whether he is getting any treatment," Hironobu Saito told reporters in Chiba, outside of Tokyo.
About 500 Japanese soldiers are stationed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah purifying water, rebuilding infrastructure and offering medical aid. The mission, combined with air and naval support troops, is Japan's largest overseas mission since World War II.
Last year, when five Japanese were taken hostage in Iraq and later released, many Japanese criticized them for recklessly entering Iraq and putting their government into a difficult position. In October, when militants beheaded a Japanese backpacker in Iraq, many here blamed the victim for his own death.
However, those incidents also fueled opposition to the government's troop dispatch. Many Japanese have criticized the deployment as a violation of Japan's pacifist constitution and for making Japan a target for terrorism.
Saito's apparent abduction has renewed some of those concerns.
Saito was being depicted in the Japanese media as something of a soldier of fortune. After reportedly serving two years with the Japanese Self Defense Forces as a paratrooper, he worked in the French Foreign Legion for more than 20 years before going to Iraq in December.
The Kyodo News agency said Saito may have been working as a security officer at a US facility.
Hironobu Saito said his brother had not contacted the family for about a decade. Even when they had contact with him, family members did not inquire about his activities. His father was unaware of his involvement in the Legion.
"No one in the family knew that he was in Iraq," Hironobu Saito told reporters late Tuesday.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army is believed to be a breakaway faction of Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish-led group with links to al-Qaeda. It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Iraq.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS