Stabbing rampage near Tokyo leaves 3 dead including assailant, scores of children injured

An elementary school girl and a man were killed in a stabbing rampage close to Tokyo on Tuesday morning, and the assailant died of a self-inflicted injury, local police said.

Sixteen other children and two adults were injured and hospitalized as a result of the mass knife attack, which was believed to have been carried out by a man in his 50s, local police and firefighters said.

An 11-year-old girl and a 39-year-old Foreign Ministry official, believed to be the father of one of the students, were later pronounced dead at hospital.

The suspect, wielding knives in both hands while shouting "I'm gonna kill you," set about slashing and stabbing the victims, according to eyewitness accounts, apparently aiming for the necks of the children and others.

Eyewitnesses told local media they heard the screams of the terrified children before they dropped to the ground in pools of blood after being stabbed.

Local police said a bus driver tried to intervene in the rampage, but stopping him was impossible as he was systematically stabbing children and others.

The bus driver was quoted as telling local media that the assailant then moved away from the immediate vicinity of the blood-soaked site of the massacre and stabbed himself in the neck.

The assailant, believed to be a resident of Kawasaki City, was taken into custody, but later died in hospital from his self-inflicted wound, police officials said, adding that they had retrieved two knives from the scene of the attack, but were unsure as to the assailant's motive.

Local police said that among those injured, two girls and a woman in her 40s were being treated for particularly serious injuries.

The bloody scenes left in the wake of the mass stabbings have been cordoned off by police and crime scene investigators were combing through the site, according to local media reports.

The local fire department was first alerted to the incident, which took place in a residential area near Noborito Station on the JR and Odakyu railway lines in Kawasaki City, which lies to the west of Tokyo, at around 7:45am local time.

The elementary school girls, who were waiting for their bus at the time of the rampage, were students at the Caritas Elementary School, a private catholic school in Kawasaki.

The school and local education board hastily tried to gather information on the attack as worried parents arrived at the school to search for their children, not knowing if they had been victims of the massacre.

Following the rampage, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued emergency measures to safeguard children while they are commuting to and from school.

Abe later told a press briefing on the mater that he was appalled that the assailant blatantly targeted young children and expressed his condolences to the victims and their families, saying that he wished that those injured would recover quickly.

Education Minister Masahiko Shibayama, who was summoned to Abe's office after the attack, said that more needed to be done to ensure safety at schools across Japan.

"The government as a whole must take measures including checking the safety of routes to schools and share information on suspicious individuals," Shibayama said.

While Japan has a comparatively low crime rate compared to other major economies, similar incidents of fatal rampages and mass killings have occurred over the years.

In 2016, 19 disabled people were killed and 26 were injured as a former staff member of the residential facility they were staying at in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, went on a stabbing spree.

Prior to that, in 2008, seven people were killed and 10 injured after a man rammed into pedestrians with a truck in a pedestrian-only area in Tokyo's Akihabara district and went on a stabbing rampage.

In 2001, eight students were killed and 15 other students and teachers were injured when a man entered a school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, and indiscriminately stabbed students and teachers.