A man was arrested Sunday, October 31, after an attack on a train in Tokyo. Armed with a knife, the suspect also started a fire on board, local media reported, reporting 17 injuries, including one serious.
A video filmed on board and posted on Twitter showed panicked passengers running on the train, fleeing from the flames and smoke creeping into the cars. Another excerpt showed passengers escaping the train through the windows, as the Keio Line convoy was immobilized at a station in the western suburbs of the Japanese capital.
The Kyodo news agency gave a toll of 15 injured, while the public broadcaster NHK reported 17 injured, including one serious – a man in his sixties. The suspect, who is said to be in his 20s, allegedly attacked people with a knife and started a fire by spilling an unidentified liquid on the train, according to media reports.
Two attacks on Japanese transport in August
When asked by Agence France-Presse, police declined to comment, and railway company Keio said“An incident involving wounded” had occurred shortly before 8 p.m. (1 p.m., in France) near Kokuryo, in the western suburbs of Tokyo.
Immediately after the attack, dozens of firefighters and police attended. The facts took place while the polling stations closed in the country after the legislative elections, as well as in the middle of Halloween, very popular in the Japanese archipelago. Assaults are rare in Japan, where gun laws are otherwise extremely strict.
In August, two more attacks took place on Tokyo public transport. In the first days of August, when the Olympic Games were being held in the Japanese capital, a knife attack on another commuter train left 10 people injured. Then, on August 24, two people suffered burns with sulfuric acid in a metro station in the capital. In both cases, suspects were arrested soon after.