During a lecture

Hammer attack at university in Tokyo: Eight injured

(Bild: AFP/JIJI Press/STR)

A female student attacked people with a hammer at a university in Tokyo on Friday, injuring at least eight of them. As Japanese media reported, citing investigative circles, the attacker was arrested at the scene. 

The perpetrator is reportedly a 22-year-old woman. All the victims are conscious, reported the broadcaster NHK. The attack reportedly took place on a campus of Hosei University in western Tokyo.

Victim hit during lecture
The sociology student hit her victims during a lecture and injured several people in the head, according to reports. One motive for the crime could therefore be pent-up anger: The young woman had felt ignored.

Several attacks in the past
Violent crimes are relatively rare in Japan, where gun laws are among the strictest in the world. However, the country was recently rocked by several knife and gun attacks, including the murder of former head of government Shinzō Abe in July 2022 at an election campaign event.

In January 2022, a knife attacker stabbed three people to death outside Tokyo University. An 18-year-old boy, a 17-year-old girl and a 72-year-old man were injured.

Entrance examinations had taken place at the university that morning. According to the police, the 17-year-old attacker had not taken part in the exams and wanted to die because he "wasn't good at school".

Last December, a man stabbed two students in a McDonald's branch in Kitakyushu in southwestern Japan. One boy was killed, the other seriously injured.