JAPAN: 2 feared dead, dozens injured in mass stabbing spree

Two victims including a 12-year-old girl and a man were fatally stabbed to death and a dozen others have been confirmed wounded by a man carrying a knife in each hand.

Reports say the man who attacked the victims in Kawasaki city, near Japan’s capital in Tokyo, before stabbing himself to death, left several people, including several children, wounded.

Local sources say most of his victims in the attack on Tuesday morning were schoolgirls who were lined up at a bus stop near Noborito Park in the city of Kawasaki, when the man reportedly in his 50s began slashing them with knives.

Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from the scene, said the attack took place near a train station and a bus stop at a time when the area was likely to be very busy with commuters.

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“Children [at the bus stop] were waiting to go to school. It seems that that is where most of the people were attacked – most of them, it seems, were schoolchildren waiting to get on a bus to go to a private Catholic school in the area,” Hay said.

“We are told that at that time of the day, the children lining up for that particular bus were for the most part Grade One students – children between six and seven years old,” he added.

National broadcaster NHK quoted police as saying that the suspect died after cutting himself in the neck. Police did not immediately confirm the specifics of that report even as the attacker’s identity and motive were not immediately known.

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