Hostage 'tried to kill captor'

2005-05-29 10:21

Baghdad - Japanese security guard Akihiko Saito tried to kill one of his captors in Iraq before being fatally wounded, insurgents claimed on Sunday after showing his bloodied body on a website video.

Another five people were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday, police said, while the al-Qaeda group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a triple suicide car bombing Saturday at an army base that killed six.

Britain's ministry of defence also reported an attack on British forces in Iraq which caused "casualties", but gave no further details.

As death toll from insurgent attacks this month alone topped more than 650, representatives of Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups reported progress in easing communal tensions and vowed to thwart attempts to fuel sectarian conflict.

An aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr told reporters that a three-hour meeting between the two sides had focused on "joint ways to serve the country and block those trying to incite sectarian strife".

Meanwhile, in a message on the Army of Ansar al-Sunna's website, the group said Saito, 44, died from wounds suffered following his capture on May 8 in western Iraq.

Seized during an ambush on his convoy, Saito had fired a weapon at one of the mujahadeen fighters guarding him, but missed, the group said. "The brother responded, firing several shots, wounding him but not killing him."

Saito was evacuated as US troops rushed to the ambush site, but then "was found dead following haemorrhaging", the group added.

'Intended to keep him alive'

"As God is a witness, we had intended to look after him and keep him alive to show the world an example of Japanese soldiers operating in Iraq while claiming to serve friendly forces," said the statement, which was signed Saturday by the organization's "military committee".

The same group had shown a video of what was said to be the body of Saito, a former Japanese paratrooper and French legionnaire who worked in Iraq for a private, British-based security firm.

In Japan, his younger brother positively identified the body.

"The image was so cruel that I didn't want to show it to my father and another brother," Saito's brother Hironobu, 34, said on Saturday.

As violence continued on the ground, the group of al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq claimed a triple suicide bomb attack on Saturday that killed six people at an army base in northwestern Iraq.

In an internet message, Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers said a suicide bomber driving "a car filled with mines" blew himself up at the first checkpoint of the Sinjar base 420km northwest of Baghdad.

The message, the authenticity of which could not be verified, added that a second suicide bomber had followed, and then a third who blew up his vehicle "in the middle of a crowd which gathered around him".

- AFP