Seven still missing after US Osprey crash off Japan

AFP :
Japan’s coastguard said late Thursday that there was still no sign of seven missing US Air Force personnel whose Osprey crashed during a training exercise, in the latest incident involving the tilt-rotor aircraft.
One unconscious person was found in the sea and later declared dead after the aircraft crashed off the island of Yakushima on Wednesday but none of the other seven on board have been found.
“No clues regarding the missing persons were obtained,” the coastguard said in a statement issued after nightfall on Thursday, more than 24 hours after the incident.
Rescue teams conducted a dive search on Thursday after sonar detected an underwater object “but only rocks were found on the seabed,” the statement said, adding that the operation would continue on Friday.
US Air Force Special Operations Command said the CV-22B Osprey was on “routine training mission” out of Yokota Air Base in Japan, with the “cause of the mishap… currently unknown”.
An emergency management official in the Kagoshima region where the crash took place said police had received information that the aircraft had been “spewing fire from a left engine”.
Photos released by the coastguard showed what appeared to be an overturned yellow life raft and other debris in the water off Yakushima, which lies south of Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu.