A vehicle carrying two Japanese freelance journalists, their driver and interpreter, both Iraqis, was attacked Thursday near Baghdad on its way from the southeastern Iraqi city of Samawah to the capital, Japanese Foreign Ministry said Friday.  

There have been mixed reports, some saying both Japanese were killed and others saying one was killed and the other injured. But the ministry said the Japanese government has yet to confirm what happened.

The Japanese are Shinsuke Hashida, 61, who lives in Bangkok, and his nephew Kotaro Ogawa, 33, from the western Japanese city of Tottori, the ministry said, citing information gained by the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad.

The driver sustained injuries and was taken to a hospital on the outskirts of Baghdad, but the fate of the interpreter is unknown, it said.

Hashida and Ogawa visited the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's camp in Samawah on Thursday morning local time to pick up a press card Hashida had applied for and headed back toward Baghdad in the early afternoon, Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba said Friday noon at a news conference in Tokyo.

In the suburb of Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, the vehicle was attacked and burst into flames, Ishiba said.

The driver escaped from the vehicle before it exploded, was taken to hospital and asked his uncle to go to the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad to inform it about the incident, according to the official.

Ishiba called the attack "intolerable" and said it is "extremely regretful" that such an incident occurred. But he said it will not affect the humanitarian and reconstruction activities of the GSDF in Samawah.

"I was informed at around 3 a.m. Japan time that Japanese were attacked in Iraq," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters at a separate press conference. "We are now doing our utmost to collect information."

To gather and confirm information about the case, mainly through the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, Kyodo News reported, adding that the foreign ministry has obtained unconfirmed information that the two Japanese were working for a TV station.

The two Japanese were in the second car of a two-car team and the driver of the first vehicle reported the attack to the Japanese Embassy, Kyodo said, quoting the driver that an unidentified car followed their cars and attacked from behind.

Hashida, who is from Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, has been covering conflicts in areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq since retiring from Nihon Denpa News Co. in 1989, for whom he had worked as a correspondent in Hanoi and Bangkok. Ogawa is a former director at Japan Broadcasting Corp., better known as NHK.

Last November, two Japanese diplomats were attacked and killed in northern Iraq.

(Xinhua News Agency May 28, 2004)