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A person believed to have a gun was holed up in a submit workplace in a Tokyo suburb on Tuesday and holding an unidentified variety of hostages, in an episode that was unsettling in Japan, the place gun violence is extraordinarily uncommon.
An worker contained in the submit workplace in Warabi metropolis referred to as the police at round 2:15 p.m., saying there was a gunman inside, in response to Taira Masuda, a spokesman for the police headquarters in Saitama Prefecture, who declined to say what number of hostages had been being held.
That report, Mr. Masuda stated, took place an hour after two males, one in his 40s and one in his 60s, had been shot at a close-by hospital, in Toda metropolis. One other official, the mayor of Toda, stated on social media {that a} man had fired a handgun at Todachuo Common Hospital and fled on a motorbike.
College students and college at a dozen elementary colleges and 6 center colleges in Toda went into lockdown, in response to a spokesperson for the Toda Metropolis Board of Schooling.
Mayor Fumihito Sugawara, in a press release on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter, described the suspect as between 40 and 50 years previous, about 5 ft 3 inches tall, with a medium construct and holding “what seemed to be a handgun.”
The submit workplace the place the suspect was holding hostages was lower than a mile from the hospital in Toda. The 2 males shot on the hospital had non-life-threatening accidents, in response to NHK, a public broadcaster.
A hospital spokesman referred inquiries to the police.
Japan has among the toughest laws for buying firearms in the world, and deadly shootings are extraordinarily uncommon. Final 12 months, Shinzo Abe, the previous prime minister, was assassinated by a gunman throughout a political marketing campaign speech. It was one in all solely 4 deaths by a firearm in all of 2022.
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