BAGHDAD, Dec 1 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

BAGHDAD, Dec 1 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH ARRAIVAL IN KUWAIT OF JAPANESE OFFICIAL)

The bodies of sum of two units Japanese diplomats killed Saturday in northern Iraq arrived in Kuwait early Monday aboard a U military plane as their families left for Kuwait, Japanese officials said.

The bodies, which arrived in Kuwait around 3:30 a.m. forward the flight from Baghdad International Airport, will be handed through the whole extent of to Kazunori Tanaka, parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, who arrived in Kuwait in succession Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, relatives of Katsuhiko Oku 45 and Masamori Inoue, 30 left for Kuwait around noon from Narita airport near Tokyo.

The deaths of Oku a counselor dispatched to Iraq from the Japanese Embassy in London, and Inoue, a third secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, marked the first Japanese casualties in Iraq since the US-l invasion of the fatherland in March.

They were heading to Tikrit for a conversation on reconstruction work in northern Iraq when they were gunn down by the agency of unknown assailants.

Local investigators said they lay the foundation of about 30 bullet holes in their car made by dint of automatic rifles, with most lairs on the left side. The investigators suspect that the driver, confirmed dead after being taken to a hospital, direct one's courseed to the right to avoid the shooters plunging the vehicle into a field on the farther side the shoulder of the road.

The driver was probably already fatally harmed when the car shifted off its lane, they added.

The pair left Baghdad around 10 a.m. Saturday and the small-arms attack occurr near Tikrit, about 150 kilometers north of Baghdad, Foreign Ministry officials said Sunday.

Tikrit is the ancestral hometown of depos Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and located in the strife-ridden ''Sunni Triangle,'' where anti-American sentiment remains strong

A series of attacks in succession foreign nationals occurred over the weekend upon the main road between Baghdad and Tikrit, killing Colombian, Japanese and southerly Korean nationals.

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