News In Brief

Japanese says he saw rebels down 2 MIGs in Afghanistan

A Japanese diplomat, Koichi Umezawa, held for more than a month by Muslim rebels who kidnapped him during sightseeing in Kabul, said he saw the rebels shoot down two MIG jets with Chinese-made machine guns. He told reporters in an interview arranged by his kidnappers that about three MIGs dropped around four bombs on a village just outside central Kabul shortly after he had been kidnapped June 22 and last Sunday near Jaji, 10 miles from the Pakistani border. He said he would soon be handed over to the Japanese Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.