Hammer attack at university leaves at least 8 injured

A hammer attack left at least eight injured on Friday at a university campus in Tokyo, before the assailant was apprehended by the police, Japanese public television NHK said. None of the injured people lost consciousness, NHK said. According to the media, the attack took place on the campus of Hosei University in the Tama district, in the west of the Japanese capital.

According to the Jiji Press agency and other media, a student in her twenties was arrested in connection with the attack. Asked by AFP, the police were not able to immediately confirm these details. Live images broadcast by NHK showed a long line of emergency vehicles and ambulances, their lights flashing, heading towards the university site, located in the Machida district.

Rare attacks

Violent crime is rare in Japan, as the archipelago has strict gun control regulations. However, stabbing attacks, even shootings like the attack which cost the life of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, sometimes occur in the country. A middle school student died after being stabbed in December, and another was injured last week at a McDonald’s restaurant in southwest Japan, an attack for which a man was later arrested.

In 2019, two people, including a schoolgirl, were stabbed and killed, and more than a dozen injured, in the city of Kawasaki during an attack by a perpetrator targeting children as they waited for a bus . The 51-year-old man then killed himself by hitting himself in the neck.