(Adds eye witness account, Japan govt comment, details)
BEIRUT/TOKYO, Aug 21 (Reuters) - A Japanese woman journalist
died of wounds sustained in a gunfight between Syrian forces and
rebels in Aleppo on Tuesday, becoming the first Japanese
national killed in the 17-month-old conflict.
Mika Yamamoto, a 45-year-old award-winning journalist
working for Tokyo-based independent news wire Japan Press, was
fatally wounded while travelling with the Free Syrian Army, a
Japanese foreign ministry official said.
In a telephone interview with a Japanese TV news programme,
fellow Japan Press reporter Kazutaka Sato, who was travelling
with Yamamoto, said it appeared she was shot by government
forces.
"We saw a group of people in camouflage fatigues coming
toward us. They appeared to be government soldiers. They started
random shooting. They were just 20, 30 metres away or even
closer," said Sato.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clash
occurred in the Suleimaniya district of Aleppo, the scene of
heavy fighting between government and rebel forces.
Japan Press was not immediately available for comment. Its
website said Yamamoto reported from Afghanistan under the
Taliban and covered the 2003 Iraq war from Baghdad.
Yamamoto's Iraq reporting won a Vaughn-Ueda prize given by
the Japanese Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association and
modelled after the U.S. Pulitzers media awards.
In April 2003 she narrowly escaped a U.S. tank's attack on
the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, Jiji news agency said, while
news agency Kyodo described her as a "pioneer video journalist".
Yamamoto is the first Japanese killed in the current armed
conflict in Syria, the ministry official said.
"It is extremely regrettable that a Japanese reporter was
gunned down and killed," Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura
said at a daily news briefing. "We reproach such an act and
offer our heartfelt condolences to those left behind."
The Syrian activist group also said that a Lebanese
journalist, a Turkish journalist and an Arab journalist, whose
nationality it did not identify, had disappeared in Aleppo.
Yamamoto's death underscores the hostile environment in
which journalists operate to cover the Syrian conflict.
According to the Reporters Without Borders organization,
Syria and Somalia rank as the world's most dangerous countries
for media this year, with five journalists and three media
assistants killed in Syria by early August and eight journalists
killed in Somalia.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, battling a 17-month-old
uprising against his family's 42-year rule, has used fighter
jets and helicopter gunships to pound rebel strongholds, often
in cities. Insurgents in turn have stepped up their own attacks,
hitting tanks, military convoys and security buildings.
At least 18,000 people have now been killed in Syria since
the anti-Assad revolt began. At least 170,000 have fled the
country, according to the United Nations, and 2.5 million need
aid inside Syria.
(Reporting by Beirut and Tokyo newsrooms; Editing Michael
Perry)