A few have been found off the southern coast of Japan scrap believed to belong to a military helicopter that went missing on Thursday. The helicopter, on which 10 people were traveling, had disappeared from the radar around 4 pm local time (9 am in Italy) during a reconnaissance mission north of the island of Miyako, part of an archipelago in the province of Okinawa, in the southern part of the country, east of Taiwan: General Yasunori Morishita, head of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (Japan Defense Army), said it is believed that the helicopter crashed into the sea.
The wreckage was found by Japanese Coast Guard vessels about 1,800 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, in the area where communications with the helicopter had been lost. The news agency Kyodo News writes that the Coast Guard has also found traces of fuel and wreckage that could be part of the rotor of the helicopter, but at the moment the Japanese authorities have not confirmed. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the defense ministry had opened an investigation.