A group of schoolchildren were attacked while waiting for a bus in Kawasaki city, Japan, on Tuesday morning. The knife-wielding attacker killed one schoolgirl and one man, injuring 16 others before stabbing himself in the neck.
The suspect, believed to be in his 50s, died in the hospital, with two knives recovered at the scene of the crime. The victims include a 12-year-old girl, Hanako Kuribayashi from Tokyo's Tama area, and a 39-year-old man, Satoshi Oyama, who works with the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.
According to Japanese national public broadcasting association, the NHK, the attack took place at 7:45am in the morning on elementary-grade schoolkids who were waiting for their bus. The man who was stabbed was a parent of one of the school kids.
The attacker's motives are as yet unclear, but there are no fears of a wider security threat as of yet. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the attack as "extremely harrowing" and called for measures to protect the safety of children and their parents.
Areas around the site are now cordoned off. NHK cites a local witness saying that he saw people covered in blood and lying on the ground.
The Asahi newspaper reports that the suspect was from Asao Ward.
Violent crime is uncommon in Japan, with such incidents tending to be isolated acts rather than coordinated attacks. The last incident of national note took place during New Year's Eve, when a Japanese man drove a van down a crowded lane in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood, injuring eight.
The van was later found to contain a tank of kerosene along with a high-pressure washer. However, the resultant police investigation found no sign that the individual was part of a larger nexus of international terrorism. The attacker claimed he committed the act in retaliation against Japan's death penalty system.
In June of 2018, two were injured and one killed after a Japanese man went on a stabbing spree in a Shinkansen bullet train. Police recovered three knives and a folding machete.
2017 saw the Zama Suicide Pact Slayings, where a 27-year-old man killed and dismembered nine people in his apartment, after posting an ad in the paper asking for people to commit suicide in his house.