The government was seized with anxiety for a short period Friday when it was reported that the body of an Asian was found in a northern Iraqi city only hours after the passing of a 48-hour deadline for the life of a Japanese traveler being held hostage by militants.
Later in the day, however, Iraqi officials said that the body found in the city of Tikrit, some 300 km north of Baghdad, was not that of 24-year-old Shosei Koda, who is being held hostage by a group linked to al-Qaeda.
Spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman of Iraq's Interior Ministry was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that residents found a man's body in the Tikrit area on Thursday that turned out to be that of an Iraqi.