Editor-DN
Tokyo, Japan:
Eight people were injured in a hammer attack at a Tokyo university on Friday, with a 22-year-old student arrested at the scene, Japanese media said.
All of the injured were conscious, according to public broadcaster NHK, which cited police sources as saying the afternoon attack took place at Hoshi University’s Tama campus.
NHK and other media outlets said the attacker, a female sociology student, had wielded the hammer during class.
Several reports said people were bleeding from the head and the woman said she was frustrated at being ignored.
Police could not immediately confirm to AFP details of the rare instance of violent crime in Japan, which has strict gun control laws.
Live footage broadcast by NHK showed a line of emergency vehicles with flashing lights on campus in the Machida district, a suburb of the Japanese capital.
There have been occasional stabbings and even shootings in Japan, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.
Hussey University was founded in 1880 as a law school and has 15 faculties, according to its website.
In December, a junior high school student was stabbed to death and another injured at a McDonald’s restaurant in southwestern Japan. A man was later arrested for the attack.
The youths were queuing to order around 8:30pm when the attacker allegedly entered the restaurant in Kitakyushu city and stabbed them both.
In January 2022, three people were stabbed outside a prestigious Tokyo university ahead of nationwide college entrance exams.
Police said at the time that the victims included an 18-year-old boy, a 17-year-old girl and a 72-year-old man.
Police arrested a 17-year-old youth, who was detained at the university gate after the early morning attack.
He was not taking an exam and was not familiar with the three victims but told police he “wanted to die after the incident because I did not do well in my studies”, NHK reported.
According to local media, the two teenagers suffered non-life-threatening injuries but the 72-year-old man was seriously injured.
The university, where 3,700 students were scheduled to take the test, went ahead with the exams as planned, NHK said.
(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
