A children's clinic will be built in Samawah, Iraq, using some of the funds raised for an Iraqi boy who received eye surgery in Japan last year, according to the widow of an assassinated Japanese journalist who arranged the boy's Japan trip.
Samawah is where Ground Self-Defense Force troops are working to help rebuild Iraq.
"I hope the clinic will help heal injured children," Yukiko Hashida, 51, said Wednesday. Her late husband, Shinsuke, 61, had arranged the first trip for Mohamad Haytham Saleh, 11, to Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, last July.
Shinsuke and Kotaro Ogawa, 33, visited Iraq last May to pick up Mohamad and bring him to Japan, but were killed in an rebel ambush while traveling south of Baghdad.
The clinic will be built next to an orphanage in Iraq that is due to be constructed by a Lions Club chapter in Saitama Prefecture. Supporters of Mohamad have raised about 25 million yen for the Hashida Memorial Mohamad Fund, which was established to build children's hospitals in Iraq.