TOKYO, Feb 9: Japan scrambled two dozen military aircraft and lodged a protest, accusing a Russian strategic bomber of entering its airspace over the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo on Saturday.

Russia denied the incursion, but the Japanese foreign ministry said it lodged a strong protest with the Russian embassy in Tokyo over the incident, which followed stepped up Russian long-range air patrols over the Atlantic.

“We have asked the Russian government to make a thorough investigation into the matter,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, which dates to the Soviet era, flew over the rocky isle of Sofugan, 650 kilometres south of Tokyo, for about three minutes from 7:30am (2230 GMT Friday), the defence ministry said.

The air force scrambled 24 planes, including F-15 fighters and an E-767 radar plane, the defence ministry said.

They gave “a notice, then a warning and another a notice and a warning”, a defence ministry statement said. “There was no response”. The Russian bomber then flew back north towards the Russian island of Sakhalin, it said.

Moscow said four Tupolev Tu-95 bombers completed a 10-hour mission over the Pacific on Saturday without violating Japanese airspace and that US fighters were also scrambled during the incident.

“Our strategic aviation planes did not violate Japanese airspace,” deputy Russian air force commander Igor Sadofyev told the Russian Interfax news agency.

Alexander Drobyshevsky, a spokesman for the Russian air force, told Russia’s ITAR-TASS agency the flights were carried out “in strict accordance with international rules on flying over neutral waters”.

“The strategic bombers were accompanied by F-15 fighter jets from the Japanese air force and F-18 fighter jets from the US carrier Nimitz,” Drobyshevsky said.—AFP