Sylvie Claire / January 12, 2025
A hammer attack left at least eight people injured on a Tokyo university campus on Friday, before the assailant was apprehended by the police, Japanese media reported. None of those injured lost consciousness, said public broadcaster NHK, which reported that the attack took place on the campus of Hosei University in the Tama district, in the western suburbs of the Japanese capital.
According to Jiji Press and other media, a student in her twenties has been arrested in connection with the attack. Contacted by AFP, the police were unable to immediately confirm these details.
Live images broadcast by NHK showed a long line of emergency vehicles and ambulances, flashing their lights, heading towards the university site, located in the Machida district.
Violent crime is rare in Japan, as the archipelago has adopted very strict gun control regulations.
However, stabbings and even shootings, such as the attack that claimed the life of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, do occur occasionally in the country.
A schoolboy died after being stabbed in December, and another was injured last week in a McDonald's restaurant in southwest Japan, an attack for which a man was subsequently arrested.
In 2019, two people, including a schoolgirl, were stabbed and killed, and more than a dozen injured, in the city of Kawasaki in an attack by an assailant targeting children as they waited for a bus. The 51-year-old man then killed himself by striking his neck.