10-year-old Japanese student stabbed and died near his school in China

BEIJING, Sept. 19 (AP): Officials in Tokyo said Thursday that a 10-year-old Japanese student attending a Japanese school in southern China who was attacked the previous day had died. They urged Beijing to release details of the stabbing and take preventive measures. A suspect is in custody. Japan's Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa expressed her condolences and said it was “extremely regrettable” that the student died despite calls for caution and increased security measures around the anniversary of the start of Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s.

Kamikawa said she had also ordered Japanese schools in China to review their security measures and urged China to disclose details of the attack and do everything possible to prevent a repeat of similar attacks on Japanese. The student was stabbed by a man about 200 meters from the gate of the Japanese school in Shenzhen, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a daily briefing. “The attacker was arrested on the spot. The case is still under further investigation,” Lin said.

The motive for the attack in the city of Shenzhen was initially unclear. In an email to Japanese citizens living in China, the Japanese embassy urged residents to be vigilant and take precautions. There have been knife attacks there in recent months. The Japanese consulate in Guangzhou, which is responsible for Shenzhen, called for measures to prevent such incidents.

On June 24, a knife attack at the bus stop of a Japanese school in the southeastern Chinese city of Suzhou killed a Chinese citizen who tried to stop the attacker and injured a Japanese mother and her child. In early June, a Chinese man stabbed four American university lecturers in a public park in Jilin in the northeast and a Chinese man who tried to intervene. The four lecturers from Cornell College were teaching at Beihua University. Their injuries were not life-threatening.