JAPANESE electronics giant Toshiba Corp announced yesterday that it began recalling about 5,100 Sony-made batteries for laptop computers in Japan and countries that include China.

Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori said there have been three cases in which the batteries caught fire between last September and June.

There were no injuries from the three fires, two in Japan and one in Australia, he said.

The battery models to be recalled are different from those returned in a massive recall of Sony Corp lithium-ion battery packs last year.

Sony announced that recall after it was found that they could overheat and catch fire.

In the latest case, company investigations found batteries manufactured in December 2005 were a cause of the problems, according to Omori.

Subjects to recall are a total 5,100 batteries sold in Japan, China, the United States, Europe and Australia used for Dynabook, Dynabook Satellite, and Tecra, the spokesman said.

In the previous much larger case, more than 10 million notebook batteries were recalled, including those from other major computer makers Dell Inc, Lenovo Inc, Apple Inc and Acer Inc.

Sony said the problems were caused by microscopic metal particles that mistakenly got inside the battery, causing short-circuiting.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has logged dozens of reports of the problem lithium-ion batteries overheating. Last year's massive recall was a major embarrassment for Sony at a time when it has been reviving profits and boosting its image.

Tokyo-based Sony has said improvements in production, design and inspection have been made to prevent a recurrence of any overheating.