3 Japanese hostages freed, 2 GIs killed

Three Japanese hostages released in Iraq yesterday were shown on Arab satellite television and they seemed to be shaken but in good health while an Italian hostage was murdered by his captors.

Two US soldiers were killed in action in separate attacks in the northern Iraqi cities of Samarra and Mosul in the last 24 hours, a US army spokesman said yesterday. Another US soldier has died from a heart attack in Iraq, a military statement said.

He gave no other details.

Security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 35, from Genoa, was shot point-blank in the back of the neck in an execution-style murder that was filmed and sent to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television station.

In a message to the station the killers, who are holding three other Italians somewhere in war-ravaged Iraq, said the execution came in response to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's refusal to pull troops out of Iraq.

They said they had "killed the hostage after comments by Berlusconi ... that the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq was not negotiable" and threatened to murder the other hostages "one by one".

Al-Jazeera said it had received a "video film and photos showing the murder of the hostage" but it chose not to broadcast the graphic material for fear of upsetting its viewers.

Al Jazeera channel showed the two men and a crying woman who appeared from the footage to be a trio captured last week. Another two Japanese civilians have been reported missing near Baghdad and their fate is unclear.

The freed Japanese were shown meeting with the spokesman of the Muslim Clerics Association, Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, and toasting him and each other with juice. The group has been negotiating the release of several groups of hostages.

Kubaisi said the Japanese were handed to him at a mosque a short time earlier. The channel said they were in good health.

"The association's request was met, but some foreign matters had delayed their release," he said on the Jazeera footage.

"Yesterday at 12:30 at night I received a signal the Japanese would be released tomorrow and I told them (abductors) to bring them to a specific place due to security concerns which may have hampered their release."

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official confirmed that three hostages had been freed and were safe.

The three Japanese taken hostage last week are Noriaki Imai, 18, who wanted to look into the effects of depleted uranium weapons, freelance journalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, and aid worker Nahoko Takato, 34. Their captors had threatened to kill them if Japan did not withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the first secretary of the Iranian embassy in Iraq was gunned down in central Baghdad yesterday by unknown assailants, an Iranian diplomat at the scene told AFP.

"It is the first secretary who was killed. I don't known how it happened, but I know he was on his way to the embassy," said the diplomat who did not wish to be identified.