Japan seeks kidnap confirmation
TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Japan is scrambling to confirm reports of a national being taken hostage in Iraq over the weekend.
An insurgent group claimed on a Web site that it had attacked the convoy of London-based security company Hart GMSSOC on Sunday in northwestern Iraq and abducted a Japanese employee, Akihiko Saito.
A Hart spokesman could not confirm a kidnapping, but did acknowledge that a Japanese man was among the missing.
At a Tuesday news conference, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said, "we are working on to confirm what happened to him. We will exert maximum effort to have him released safely and as soon as possible, if he was indeed taken hostage or injured gravely."
Ansar al-Sunna claimed to have abducted Saito, 44, after attacking a convoy that left the American base at Al Assad.
The group claimed "a big battle took place" between their mujahedeen and "12 Iraqi traitors and five foreigners very well-equipped with guns (and) bombs."
The group claimed that their targets surrendered, and when helicopters arrived to assist the convoy, the mujahedeen "managed to capture and kill them immediately," except for the one Japanese man.
"He is now abducted by the mujahedeen but severely injured, and we will publish his pictures soon," the Web site statement said.
"And we will also publish the pictures of those that the mujahedeen have killed during the attack."
The statement's authenticity and veracity could not be immediately verified.
According to Machimura, the Japanese government is scrambling to confirm the information, setting up a task force in the Foreign Ministry, as well as a liaison office in the prime minister's office.
Japanese Minister of Defense Yoshinori Ohno said that the kidnap will have no effect at this moment on the mission of Japanese Self Defense Forces deployed in southern Iraq at Samawa.
