JAPAN : ''STUDENTS -HARROWING-CASE- SADNESS''

KAWASAKI : A knife-wielding attacker killed a 12-year old schoolgirl and a man stabbing himself to death in a campaign outside Tokyo on Tuesday that also injured more than a dozen, including several students/children.

Local media reported that the suspected attacker, a man in his 50s, had also died of his wounds after turning the knife on himself. Emergency services said that at least 16 others had been injured in the attack.

''It's a very harrowing case. I feel strong anger,'' Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in televised remarks. ''I offer  my heartfelt condolences to the victims and hope the injured recovered quickly.''

According to local media, eye witnesses saw a  middle-aged man clasping a knife near the bus stop where the  students/children were waiting, shouting : ''I will kill you''.

A local man living nearby, who identified himself as Matsumoto, 25, said he went outside after hearing screams.

''It's hard to describe what it was like, how it sounded. It wasn't girls having fun, it was a sound that was absolutely not normal,'' he said.

''I saw a man lying on the street. I also saw a girl hunched over on the ground. There were also  five or six girls, maybe they were the ones who screamed. There was blood all over them.'' [AFP]