20 August 2012
Award-winning Japanese journalist killed in Syria
Crossfire
Japan official says death of journalist in clash in Syria's Aleppo "regrettable"
An award-winning Japanese journalist died Monday [20 August] in Syria while covering the civil war by accompanying the rebel group Free Syrian Army, the Japanese government said Tuesday. Mika Yamamoto, 45, was killed in Aleppo in northern Syria, during a clash between rebels and forces loyal to the Syrian government. Another freelance Japanese journalist, Kazutaka Sato, who worked with her, reported Yamamoto's death to Japan's Foreign Ministry.
Sato told her family that a group of people clad in camouflage gear approached and opened fire randomly at a point 20 to 30 metres away from her. She received a fatal gunshot to her neck, he said.
"I told her to run. It could have been less than 20 or 30 metres" between Yamamoto and the attackers, Sato told Nippon Television Network Corp. The gunfire prompted other journalists from other countries to run in all directions, Sato said. Yamamoto was known for her coverage of conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Uganda for more than 15 years. She received the Vaughn-Uyeda Memorial Prize for contributions made by Japanese journalists in the field of international affairs in fiscal 2003.
Like Sato, Yamamoto belonged to a Tokyo-based independent media group, The Japan Press, and provided news materials from Syria for the Tokyo-based broadcaster. The Japanese Embassy in Turkey told Kyodo News early Tuesday that the body of a Japanese woman killed in Syria had been delivered to southern Turkey on Monday evening and confirmed to be Yamamoto. In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said in a press conference Tuesday morning, "This is extremely regrettable...We strongly condemn such acts and offer our condolences to her family." According to Radio France, Syrian rebels posted video footage online showing the body of Yamamoto, who sustained a severe injury in her right arm, saying she was killed by paramilitary forces supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Rami Abdulrahman, a representative of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Kyodo News that Yamamoto was killed in the Suleiman al-Halabi district.
Three people accompanying her including Lebanese and Turkish journalists have gone missing and there is information that they might have been taken by government forces, it said. The death of Yamamoto was first reported Monday by Al-Arabiya television and Al-Jazeera satellite television. An employee at a hotel in the city of Kilis, near the Syrian border in southern Turkey, said the hotel had been unable to contact its registered guests -- a Japanese woman named Mika Yamamoto and a Japanese man named Kazutaka Sato -- after they left the hotel Monday morning, saying they were headed for Syria. They left their belongings at the hotel, the employee said.
A Turkish reporter staying at the hotel told Kyodo News by phone that he heard from a reporter for an Arabian media outlet, who made a day-trip Monday from Kilis to Aleppo, that Yamamoto had been shot, but whether she was still alive was not clear. Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1967, Yamamoto graduated from Tsuru University in the prefecture and joined The Japan Press in the mid-1990s after working as a director at a cable TV broadcaster Source: Kyodo News Service
