An American military base worker has admitted strangling a young woman found dead near a roadside in Japan’s southern Okinawa region, according to local media reports.

Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 32, was arrested by police on suspicion of abandoning the body of Rina Shimabukuro, a 20-year-old office worker, who disappeared last month.

The arrest comes at a particularly sensitive time in US-Japan relations, with Barack Obama, the US president, due to arrive in Japan next week for the Group of Seven summit in Mie Prefecture.

Mr Obama will be hoping that tensions surrounding the arrest and protests in relation to the presence of American military in Okinawa will not overshadow his visit, during which he plans to become the first acting US president to visit nuclear-hit Hiroshima city.