Man screamed ‘I will kill you’ then stabbed schoolgirls at bus stop in Japan

Three people are dead and 16 others – mostly schoolgirls – are injured after a man screaming ‘I will kill you’ attacked at a bus stop in Japan.

The man, in his 40s or 50s, carried a knife in each hand and began stabbing people lined up at the stop near Noborito Park in the city of Kawasaki.

He killed two people before taking his own life, local authorities said.

Most of the victims were schoolgirls, an official at the Kawasaki city office told the Associated Press.

He said three of the injuries were serious and 13 others were not life-threatening.

NHK national television, quoting police, said that the suspect died after cutting himself in the neck.

Police would not immediately confirm the specifics of that report.

Most of the victims attended a school founded by Soeurs de la Charite de Quebec, an organisation of Catholic nuns in Quebec City in Canada.

A witness told the Mainichi newspaper that he heard children shrieking after walking past a bus, and when he turned around, he saw a man wielding a knife in each hand, screaming ‘I will kill you’ and that several children were on the ground.

NHK, citing police, said that a bus driver told officials that a man holding a knife in each hand walked toward the bus and started slashing children.

NHK also interviewed a witness who said he saw the suspect trying to force his way onto a bus.

The attacker’s identity and motives were not immediately known.

Television footage showed emergency workers giving first aid to people inside an orange tent set up on the street, and police and other officials carrying the injured to ambulances.

Although Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, it has had a series of high-profile killings, including in 2016 when a former employee at a home for the disabled allegedly killed 19 and injured more than 20 others.

In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.

Also in 2016, a man stabbed four people at a library in northeastern Japan, allegedly over their mishandling of his questions. No one was killed.