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."
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