Syrian driver says pro-Assad militia killed Japanese journalist - Reuters

By Oliver Holmes

AZAZ, Syria | Sun Aug 26, 2012 10:23am EDT

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - The Syrian driver who took Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto into the wartorn city of Aleppo said she had been shot dead by militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, after following rebels on a mission to rescue civilians.

The 38-year-old driver, who gave his name only as Abdulrahman, told Reuters Yamamoto and her colleague Kazutaka Sato had crossed the Turkish border with two journalists working for the U.S.-funded al-Hurra television, and asked to be taken to the northern city of Aleppo.

The al-Hurra journalists were reported detained by the militiamen in Aleppo and have not been heard of since.

Abdulrahman said the group had been regularly entering the northern city of Aleppo from Turkey. They had aked him to take them to Salaheddine, an area of the city where rebels have been fighting Assad's forces for weeks.

"When we arrived in Aleppo, we asked rebels which districts were under their control and how we could get to Salaheddine safely without being hit by government snipers," he said.

The team spoke to the commander of a unit of the rebel Tawheed brigade named Abu Nasser, who assigned a fighter to escort the team through the city.

"On the way through Aleppo, a helicopter flew over and started firing into the Suleiman al-Halabi district. Rebels started firing back with anti-aircraft machineguns. Then a MiG (fighter jet) came and destroyed two houses in Suleiman al-Halabi," the driver said.

Abu Nasser told the driver he would send fighters into the district to retrieve the dead and wounded from the strike.

The journalists decided to change their plan and go and film the rescue mission though the rebel commander warned against it.

"Abu Nasser said Suleiman al-Halabi was not completely controlled by the rebels and that the place was crawling with army and shabbiha," the driver said, referring to paramilitary groups loyal to Assad accused of some of the worst atrocities committed during the 17-month-old uprising.

Rebels say they control around 60 percent of Aleppo, Syria's most populous city with 4 million residents.

Other districts of the city are controlled by the government and others, like Suleiman al-Halabi, are mixed. Residents say shabbiha militia move through all districts in civilian clothes.

BLOCKED IN

The team of journalists asked the driver to park at the edge of Suleiman al-Halabi and went in on foot with the rebels.

"They split into two teams, the two al-Hurra journalists with one group of rebels and the Japanese couple with another team," he said.

Abdulrahman waited in his car for an hour. Then he heard gunfire and incoming mortar bombs. "The rebels were getting blocked in. There were mortars falling behind them and shabbiha advancing in front of them."

Abu Nasser came speeding out of the district in a car and said the rebels had been caught out - they did not have the heavy weapons needed to repel an attack.

The commander reentered the district to join his men and came out half an hour later to say Yamamoto had been killed.

"Abu Nasser said that she had been filming the shabbiha from less than 50 metres and they shot her in the arm and in the neck," he said. "It's possible she thought they were civilians as they don't wear uniforms."

Rebels retrieved Yamamoto's body and found her colleague Sato sheltering on the fifth storey of a nearby building.

"He thought she was still alive. I took him to the Dar al-Shifaa hospital in Aleppo to see the body. He cried."

Cameraman Sato later told Reuters that he had been standing next to Yamamoto when she was shot: "I couldn't save her ... I couldn't. She was on my right side, two or three metres (away).

"She is a woman, so maybe they (her killers) recognized she is a woman - but they only shot, killing," he said in Kilis, Turkey shortly after leaving Syrian territory.

Abu Nasser told the driver that during the firefight, the two al-Hurra journalists were captured by the shabbiha. No word of their fate has emerged since.

"I took the Japanese man and the body to the border," Abdulrahman said.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)