Three Japanese civilians taken hostage last week by militants in Iraq have been released in Baghdad, NHK's news channel reported Thursday.  

NHK quoted Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera as saying the three are under the protection of the Islamic Clerics Association in the Iraqi capital and are in good health.

According to Kyodo News, the three will be handed over to the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad shortly and Japanese government eyes sending chartered plane to pick up them.

The three are Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a freelance photo journalist from Tokyo, Nahoko Takato, 34, a volunteer worker from Chitose, Hokkaido, and Noriaki Imai, 18, from Sapporo.

NHK broadcast footage of the three hostages after their release by their captors.

The three were captured by a militant group calling itself Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades) while on their way from Amman to Baghdad and were believed to have been held in or around Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

Two other Japanese -- Jumpei Yasuda, a 30-year-old freelance journalist, and his roommate Nobutaka Watanabe, a 36-year-old member of a nongovernmental organization -- are also believed to have been taken hostage in Iraq. They went missing on Wednesday, but their fates are as yet unknown.

The Japanese government received information early Thursday morning that two more Japanese had been taken captive, but has yet to confirm what happened, top Japanese government spokesman Yasuo Fukuda said earlier.

"We will put our utmost effort into rescuing them if this is confirmed to be true," Fukuda told a press conference Thursday afternoon.

Yasuda and Watanabe failed to return to their Baghdad apartment on Wednesday, Kyodo said, adding that in Baghdad on Wednesday, a Japanese journalist said he received an e-mail from an Iraqi friend saying he had seen the two Japanese being snatched by armed men.

The two were traveling in a taxi to take photos of a US military helicopter that crashed Tuesday near Abu-Greib, west of Baghdad, according to the e-mail and other information.

They were followed by a car, asked to pull over and then surrounded by three more cars. They were then seized by an armed group.

The Iraqi was in the cab but was released along with the driver. When confronted by the group, the driver said the two Japanese were Chinese, but the group noticed that one of the two carried a Japanese passport and figured both were from Japan, the e-mail said.

According to Kyodo, at their homes in Saitama and Tochigi prefectures Thursday, the families of the two voiced concerns about their safety, saying they need any information they can get.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi strongly urged people not to go to Iraq.

"The government has issued an advisory not to enter Iraq. Even so, some people go to Iraq. I do ask everyone not to enter Iraq because it is dangerous," Koizumi told reporters.

Despite growing fears that the presence of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) troops in Iraq is making the security environment worse for the Japanese, Koizumi reiterated that he has no plans to pull the troops out of Iraq.

"The SDF will not withdraw from Iraq," he said.

In the southern Iraqi city of Samawah, where a 550-strong Ground Self-Defense Force contingent is based, about 300 Iraqis held a rally for the first time demanding the pullout of the Japanese troops.

The armed group that held the three Japanese, which calls itself Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades), had threatened to kill them unless Japan withdraws its troops.

The group is abducting people from the United States and its allies, according to a statement given to a French journalist who was freed Wednesday from captivity, Kyodo said.

The group that took four Italians captive claimed that it killed one of the hostages because Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rejected its demand that he withdraw Italian troops, according to its statement aired Thursday by Al-Jazeera.

Italy's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of the four Italians in Iraq has been slain, but Berlusconi vowed the same day to keep the troops in Iraq.

Koizumi denounced the killing of the Italian.

"It is extremely regrettable if it is true," he said. "We should not surrender to the kind of extremely despicable act."

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2004)