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Japanese Woman Gang-Raped by GIs
A woman in her 20s was gang-raped early Friday by men believed to be foreign nationals on Okinawa, the southern Japanese island that hosts a major US military base, police said.
Kyodo news agency reported that the attackers were believed to be members of the US military but local police would not confirm this.
The Kyodo report did not state why it was believed the attackers were American servicemen.
A spokesman for Okinawa prefectural police confirmed that a rape had been committed.
"An Okinawan woman in her 20s was raped by men believed to be foreign nationals," Tomomitsu Higa told AFP.
"The suspects are currently at large. We have yet to determine how many were involved in the rape. The crime may have been committed by a single suspect," he said.
The victim was raped at a parking lot in Chatan, some 18 kilometers (11 miles) north of Naha, the capital of Okinawa at around 2 am on Friday.
A spokesman for the United States Forces in Japan in Okinawa told AFP that US military bases in the region were cooperating with police.
"We are aware of an alleged incident here, and the US bases are cooperating with the prefectural police in their ongoing investigation, other than that we have no information," Colonel John Freund said.
Okinawa, which was handed back to Japan in 1972 after 27 years of US military rule following World War II, still hosts about two-thirds of the 47,000 US troops in the country.
A series of offenses by US servicemen there have aroused local history against the continuing military presence in recent years.
The 1995 rape of a local 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.
The latest incident is likely to overshadow this weekend's first summit between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and US President George W. Bush at Camp David.
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