Schoolgirl among 2 dead in Japan stabbing spree

Kawasaki, May 28

Two persons, including a schoolgirl, were stabbed to death and more than a dozen injured in Japan on Tuesday in a rampage that targeted children as they waited for a bus.

The attacker, a man in his 50s who has not yet been identified, crept silently up behind a group of children at the bus stop and slashed randomly at them before fatally stabbing himself in the neck.

The police said an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Hanako Kuribayashi and a 39-year-old parent, identified as government official Satoshi Oyama, died in the attack, which shocked a country where violent crime is rare. Seventeen more people, mainly young children, were injured.

Koji Shimazu of the St Marianna University School of Medicine, said one woman in her 40s and three schoolgirls had to undergo surgery for knife wounds to the head and neck.

“It is a very harrowing case. I feel strong anger,” Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in televised remarks. “I offer my heartfelt condolences to the victims and hope the injured recover quickly,” he said.

A local man living nearby, who identified himself as Matsumoto, 25, said he went outside after hearing screams. “It’s hard to describe what it was like, how it sounded. It wasn’t girls having fun, it was a sound that was absolutely not normal.”

The attack occurred during the busy early morning commute as workers headed to their offices and children to school. 

Teiko Naito, principal of the school’s elementary section, said in a televised news conference: “A man carrying knives in his both hands came from a convenience store and slashed children in the queue one-by-one.” 

The bloodshed came as Donald Trump wrapped up a state visit to Japan, and the US President offered his “prayers and sympathy” to the victims as he met troops outside Tokyo.

Standing aboard a Japanese military ship, he said that “all Americans stand with the people of Japan and grieve for the victims and for their families”. The country has famously strict gun control regulations and gun crime is unusual, but there have been a few high-profile stabbing attacks. — AFP