Man stabs three adults at Japanese school
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-15 00:03

TOKYO - A man carrying a knife burst into a public elementary school in western Japan on Monday and stabbed at least three adults, police said. Kyodo News reported that one of the victims died.

Police arrested a "younger man" for the attack, said Isoo Noda, spokesman for the Neyagawa City police, near Osaka. Kyodo News reported the attacker was a 17-year-old who graduated from the elementary school.

Noda said no students were hurt in the attack.

The attack triggered panic at the school. National broadcaster NHK showed aerial footage of students running frantically out of the school building and gathering in the playground.

A local education board spokesman, Yoshihige Nishikawa, said the injured were three teachers — two men and one woman. Two of them were taken to the hospital with serious injuries, he said.

Kyodo News reported that one of the victims — a man in his 50s — had died. Police could not immediately confirm that.

The stabbings happened in the faculty room, Nishikawa said.

School security has been a rising concern in Japan since a man with a history of mental illness killed eight children in a stashing rampage at an elementary school in Osaka in 2001.

The killer, Mamoru Takuma, was executed last September.

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