The US Air Force says divers have found human remains and the main fuselage of the US Osprey aircraft that crashed into the sea off southwestern Japan last week. The Air Force says they have located five crewmembers, and recovered two of the bodies.

The tilt-rotor transport aircraft crashed off the island of Yakushima in Kagoshima Prefecture last Wednesday. The crash left one crewmember dead and the seven others missing.

The US military, Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Japan Coast Guard have been searching around the crash site.

Parts apparently from the Osprey that were earlier retrieved from the waters have already been handed over to US forces to help identify the cause of the crash.

Meanwhile, the Okinawa prefectural assembly convened a special committee on US military bases.

Prefectural officials explained that the US Air Force has grounded its fleet of CV-22 Ospreys, but that the US Marines are still flying another model, the MV-22.

The officials said that in the first 10 months of the year, a total of 22 Ospreys of the US Air Force had flown to Kadena Base in Okinawa. The total for all of last year was 13.

The committee confirmed that it will submit a draft statement on the crash and a draft resolution of protest at the current session of the assembly.