Tokyo,
\nJapanese authorities said on Tuesday they had recovered a body part during the search for a crew member missing in a deadly military helicopter crash in the<\/p>\n
country’s southwest.<\/p>\n
The Apache helicopter crashed Monday in a residential area in Saga province, killing co-pilot Hiroki Takayama and leaving lead pilot Kenichi Saito missing.<\/p>\n
“We were informed that a body part was found. But we’re still confirming the identity of the body part,” a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.<\/p>\n
The helicopter crashed in Saga prefecture seven minutes after takeoff, slamming into and setting on fire a house that was completely destroyed in the accident.<\/p>\n
An 11-year-old girl was in the house at the time, but survived with minor injuries.<\/p>\n
Video footage captured by a camera in a nearby car showed the helicopter dropping from the sky almost vertically, with its nose pointing directly towards the<\/p>\n
ground.<\/p>\n
The crash site was just 300 metres (1,000 feet) from a local elementary school and sent a thick plume of grey smoke rising from in between the rooftops of<\/p>\n
local houses.<\/p>\n
The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was conducting a test flight after routine maintenance at the time of the accident, and had taken off from a Self-Defence<\/p>\n
Forces (SDF) base, according to the defence ministry.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered said his government would investigate the incident.<\/p>\n
“It is very regrettable that the Self-Defence Forces, which should protect the people’s lives and peaceful living, threatened their safety and caused tremendous<\/p>\n
damage,” he told a parliamentary session.<\/p>\n
“I apologise sincerely,” Abe added.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry said it has suspended the flight of all 12 of its AH-64 helicopters for inspections.<\/p>\n
The incident revived memories of a 2016 crash in which a Japanese air force jet with six people aboard went missing in mountainous terrain.<\/p>\n
Their bodies were later recovered.<\/p>\n
There has also been a string of accidents involving US military helicopters that have fuelled opposition to their presence in the country.<\/p>\n
The latest was a UH-1 helicopter that was forced into an emergency landing last month on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.<\/p>\n
Japan’s SDF have been banned from waging any kind of combat beyond defence of the nation since the US-imposed constitution of 1947 that followed the<\/p>\n
carnage of World War II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo, Japanese authorities said on Tuesday they had recovered a body part during the search for a crew member missing in a deadly military helicopter crash in the country’s southwest. The Apache helicopter crashed Monday in a residential area in Saga province, killing co-pilot Hiroki Takayama and leaving lead pilot Kenichi Saito missing. “We were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21076,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21074\/revisions\/21076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}