The third and final group of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) core contingent left a military air base in Hokkaido on Sunday for Kuwait, paving the way for full GSDF aid operations in Iraq.

After undergoing training in Kuwait, the 120-member team will be deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah by the end of this month, completing the 550-member contingent tasked with supplying water, repairing local infrastructure and providing medical services.

An advance team arrived in Samawah in mid-January, another GSDF contingent in early February and the first two batches of the core contingent just recently.

According to Kyodo News, also on Sunday, some 60 members of the second wave of the core contingent, including 11 female personnel, entered Iraq from Kuwait and joined the GSDF camp in Samawah. The other 130 members of the 190-member second batch entered the city a day earlier.

It was the first time that female GSDF members entered Iraq and the second time Japan has dispatched female troops overseas, after female GSDF members were sent to East Timor in 2002 under UN peacekeeping operations.

Japan Air Self-Defense Force has deployed a contingent of roughly 200 troops in Kuwait and has begun airlifting relief goods and other supplies to Iraq using three C-130 cargo planes.

A Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel escorted by a destroyer, meanwhile, transported vehicles and supplies for the GSDF troops earlier this month.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)