Two suicide bombers detonated their cars in northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least five Iraqis and wounding 40, hospital and police officials said. The bombs went off near an Iraqi military base in Sinjar, northwest of Mosul, said a police official on customary condition of anonymity.
Earlier, gunmen shot dead a Sunni Muslim tribal leader with close ties to Iraqi Kurds in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said Saturday. Sheik Sabhan Khalaf al-Jibouri, 52, died late Friday outside his home, Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said, according to The AP.
Elsewhere, a Marine was killed while taking part in an operation in Haditha, northwest of Baghdad, the US military said Friday. He died Thursday.
Meanwhile, Akihiko Saito, a Japanese security consultant who has been missing in Iraq since an Iraqi group ambushed a convoy he was riding earlier in May, has died from wounds after being shot, according to the group.
The Sunni group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, has posted on its website a picture of what appears to be a dead man, whom it claims is Saito, along with images of his passport and ID card.
Saito's younger brother Hironobu, however, told reporters Saturday at his home in Chiba, Chiba Prefecture, that he received a phone call from the foreign ministry earlier in the day in which a ministry official said the image is ''most likely'' that of Saito.
A four-minute video on the website said Saito died from injuries after being shot many times. ''The image shown in the video is our answer to those who are trying to come to Iraq to deprive us of our religion, territory and honor,'' the group said in the video.
