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."
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary