19 killed in Japan stabbing attack
At least 19 people have been killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack at a facility for the disabled in a city just outside Tokyo in the worst mass killing in generations in Japan.
Police and emergency services workers at the scene of the attack. Photo: EPA
Police say they responded to a call at about 2.30am (0330 AEST) on Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 50km west of Tokyo.
A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police in Sagamihara said.
He left the knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing.
Officials in Kanagawa prefecture, which borders Tokyo, identified the suspect as Satoshi Uematsu, and said he had worked at the facility until February.
Japanese media reports said he was 26 years old.
He entered the building about 2.10am by breaking a glass window on the first floor of a residential building at the facility, Shinya Sakuma, head of prefectural health and welfare division, said at a news conference.
Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa expressed his condolences to the victims.
The Sagamihara City fire department said 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said doctors at the scene confirmed the deaths.
The death toll could make this the worst mass killing in Japan in the post-World War II era.
A woman who lives across from the facility told Japanese broadcaster NHK that she saw police cars enter the facility around 3.30am.
“I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous,” she said. “Then ambulances began arriving, and blood-covered people were taken away.”
Japanese broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed.
The facility, called the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, is home to about 150 adult residents who have mental disabilities, Japan’s Kyodo News service said.
Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside, with medical and other rescue workers running in and out.
Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws.
In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.
Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 40km north-east of Tokyo.
-AP
