Tokyo government has pledged to do its best to rescue a Japanese national reportedly taken hostage by militants in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Japan was keeping in touch with the "foreign security company" which employs Tokyo native Akihito Saito, who was apparently taken hostage by an Al-Qaeda linked group after a gunfight.

The Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said on Monday that it had kidnapped a Japanese civilian after killing four other foreign contractors.

In a statement posted on the Internet, the Ansar al-Sunna Army identified the hostage as an operation manager working with a security company in Iraq.

A total of six Japanese hostages were taken by Iraqi militants last year in three separate incidents.

(CRI.com May 10, 2005)