A woman in her 20s has been gang-raped by men believed to be United States servicemen in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Police received an emergency call from a passerby, Kyodo News agency reported, adding no further details were available.
"We have not announced anything on the case as investigation
is under way to confirm whether or not the incident took place," said Tomomitsu Hira, a spokesman for Okinawa prefectural police.
Okinawa, which was handed back to Japan in 1972, 27 years after the Second World War, still hosts about two-thirds of the 47,000 US troops in the country. Offences by US servicemen there have aroused strong antipathy against the continuing military presence. The 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen sparked mass protests demanding the removal of US forces from Okinawa, a strategic island chain within striking distance of China and the Korean Peninsula.
