A Russian patrol boat fired on a Japanese trawler near disputed islands on Sunday, close to where two other Japanese trawlers were shot at the following day, a Foreign Ministry official said in Tokyo on Wednesday.


The patrol boat fired 10 times on the 138-ton Kiyo-Maru No. 61 over three hours late Sunday after it ignored warning shots and tried to escape, he told Reuters.


Captain Kenji Nakatani, 49, was injured in his left eye by a piece of flying glass and was taken to hospital after arriving in a north Japanese port Wednesday. The rest of the crew of seven was unhurt.


The boat had been trawling for cuttlefish in the sea off Habomai, one of four islands north of Japan which Russia controls but Japan claims belong to it.


On Monday a fisherman was injured in the spine when a Russian gunboat opened fire on two Japanese trawlers, sparking angry protests from Tokyo. Yesterday Lieutenant General Vitaly Sedykh, commander of Russia's Pacific Border Guards, told a news conference in this port city that the two Japanese fishing boats lacked designation marks and disobeyed all commands to stop.


After firing warning shots, the Russian patrol ship fired shells from its 30mm cannon from a distance of about two or three kilometers, Sedykh said. His remarks were reported by Itar-Tass.


Both boats were hit, but one escaped, he said. Russian officials boarded the other vessel, the Kiei Maru No. 38, and found that its captain, identified by Japanese authorities as Koichi Ikeura, 31, had been wounded.


Sedykh said the captain had been hit by about 20 small shell fragments in the back, shoulders and neck. After surgery, he was taken to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island for further treatment and eventual trial, he said.


"The border guards found three boxes of fish aboard the boat, and the captain confessed they violated the law," Itar-Tass said.


So far this month, Russian border guards have detained five Japanese boats and 45 crew members, Itar-Tass said. Some of the fishermen have been convicted of poaching and are serving prison sentences, it said.


The Soviet Union occupied the islands after the Japanese surrender in World War II. It only declared war on Japan after the first U.S. atom bomb had been dropped in 1945.


The dispute is the main obstacle to improved relations between the two nations, which have never signed a treaty officially ending their wartime hostilities.


The waters around the islands are an important source of food and money for Russians in the Far East.


(Reuters, AP)