Russian patrol boat fires on Japanese boat, one dead

JAPAN: A Japanese fisherman died after a Russian border patrol boat fired on a Japanese fishing boat east of Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido, a Japanese Coast Guard official said on Wednesday.

The Japanese crab boat with four fishermen on board was in disputed waters between Japan and Russia when a Russian border guard opened fire, the Japanese Coast Guard official said.

"We received a report that the fishing boat was fired on and one of the four fishermen was dead," he said.

The Japanese official, citing information from Russian authorities, said the Russian border patrol had seized the Japanese fishing boat before firing.

The Russians then took the Japanese boat and the fishermen to one of four nearby islands claimed by both Russia and Japan, the official said.

The Japanese prime minister's office set up an information task force within its crisis management unit to deal with the incident.

"We are going to investigate what happened, what action the fishing boat was engaged in," the Japanese government source said. "When everything has been made clearer, I think the Japanese government is going to make a protest about the excessive use of force."

Japan and Russia have been locked in a long-running dispute over the islands, known as the Northern Territories in Japan and Southern Kuriles in Russia.

Meanwhile Japan summoned the acting Russian ambassador, Mikhail Galuzin, to protest and demand the release of the fishermen.

"There is no way we can tolerate this unfounded situation to occur within Japanese waters," Chikahito Harada, the director general of the foreign ministry's European affairs bureau, told the envoy.

Japan wants "appropriate humanitarian measures and the immediate release of the crew and the ship," Harada said, as quoted by Jiji Press.

Galuzin said he would relay the message to Moscow immediately but told reporters that the Japanese boat was suspected to be within Russian territory.

The boat was towed to one of the disputed Kuril islands off Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido for investigation by Russian authorities, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Jiji Press said authorities suspected the victim to be a 35-year-old Japanese man.

Tokyo, Wednesday, Reuters, AFP