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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 one hostage after releasing one other, 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. The hostages had been two feminine postal employees of their 20s and 30s, the police stated, and negotiators are speaking to the suspect by phone. Round 7:15 p.m., NHK, a public broadcaster, confirmed footage of the girl in her 20s strolling out of the submit workplace with out damage.
The decision, Mr. Masuda stated, happened 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 Toda Chuo Basic Hospital and fled on a bike.
The suspect has not made any calls for, the police advised NHK. Within the broadcaster’s footage, it appeared that the girl who was launched on Tuesday night bowed as she left the submit workplace.
College students and college members 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 Training.
Mayor Fumihito Sugawara, in a press release on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter, described the suspect as 40 to 50 years previous, about 5 ft 3, with a medium construct and holding “what gave the impression 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, a health care provider and a affected person, had non-life-threatening accidents, in response to NHK.
A hospital spokesman referred inquiries to the police.
Japan has among the hardest legal guidelines for getting firearms on the earth, and deadly shootings are extraordinarily uncommon. Final yr, Shinzo Abe, the previous prime minister, was assassinated by a gunman throughout a political marketing campaign speech. It was certainly one of solely 4 deaths by a firearm in all of 2022.
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