Warnings posted before Tokyo attack

A man arrested for killing seven people in a knife rampage on a crowded Tokyo shopping street posted dozens of warning messages on the Internet in the hours leading up to the attack, Japanese media reported yesterday.

Japanese police arrested a 25-year-old blood-spattered man at the scene for driving a truck into a crowd of Sunday shoppers in Akihabara, Tokyo's biggest electronics shopping district, and then walking down the street stabbing people at random.

Passers by prayed and dropped flowers yesterday at the scene of the attack, as a bewildered Japan tried to make sense of the latest in a series of random acts of violence.