10:40am UK, Friday December 17, 2010
A man has been arrested after 14 people were injured - at least five of them stabbed - on two packed buses in Japan.
Unemployed Yuta Saito, 27, was arrested on charges of attempted murder after the attack outside Toride railway station about 40km (25 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
"The suspect got onto the buses and wielded a knife and slashed passengers," a local police spokesman said.
The man was quoted as saying: "I wanted to end my life."
At least five of the victims were stabbed, with what reports said was a 25cm (10in) kitchen knife, while the others were punched or stampeded.
The injured included eight high school pupils, four junior high school pupils and two women aged 49 and 59, reports said.
Police check around a bus where one of the attacks took place
"One of those injured in the attack has wounds that will require several weeks in the hospital, while the others are not seriously injured," local fire department spokesman Shireka Iyoka said.
Times journalist Richard Lloyd-Parry is in Tokyo and told Sky News: "According to local reports he came out the station where there buses were waiting carrying a lot of school children.
"It sounds like a random attack although we do not know that yet. There have been a number of attacks like this, random attacks on strangers by disturbed individuals."
The incident has evoked memories of an attack in central Tokyo in 2008 when a man slammed a truck into a crowd of people and began stabbing passers-by at random.
No comments:
Post a Comment