Three people stabbed at Japan library as police arrest 61-year-old suspect

Japanese police arrested a 61-year-old man after three people were wounded in a knife attack inside a public library in Fukuoka on Thursday.

According to the Fukuoka Prefectural Police, an emergency call came in at around 7.50pm local time reporting that multiple people had been stabbed and that a security guard had managed to restrain a man armed with a knife.

Officers rushed to the scene and arrested Tatsuo Yoshii for attempted murder. Investigators claimed that Mr Yoshii admitted to attacking the victims and told authorities he didn’t know them. The stabbings occurred on the ground floor of the Fukuoka City General Library in the city’s Sawara area.

Police said an elderly man in his 80s suffered a serious stab wound to the abdomen.

A security guard in his 70s and a woman in her 50s were also injured, with wounds to their necks and hands, the police said.

All three were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. Officials said they were conscious and their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

A knife was recovered at the scene and seized as evidence.

Police said that they were investigating the motivation behind the attack, The Japan Times reported.

The attack came days after a 21-year-old man was arrested after a fatal stabbing in Dotonbori area of Osaka.

Ryoga Iwasaki was accused of killing Ryunosuke Kamata, 17 and seriously injuring two other boys of the same age on the night of 14 February.

The Asahi Shimbun reported, quoting unnamed sources, that Mr Iwasaki had been harassing a woman at the scene and the teenagers stepped in to challenge him shortly before the stabbing.

In December, a 38-year-old man attacked workers at a tyre factory in Mishima, stabbing eight people and spraying seven others with a bleach-like substance. The man was later arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Violent crime is relatively rare in Japan. The country has a low homicide rate and its gun control laws are among the toughest in the world. However, isolated acts of violence do occur, including knife attacks and rare shootings, most notably the 2022 assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe.

In June last year, Japan executed a man known as the “Twitter Killer”, who had been found guilty of murdering and dismembering nine people after contacting them on social media. It marked Japan’s first execution in almost three years.

In July 2016, a 26-year-old man named Satoshi Uematsu carried out a mass stabbing at a disability care facility in Sagamihara, near Tokyo, killing 19 people and injuring 25 in one of Japan’s deadliest attacks in decades.