Dozens of firefighters and police were mobilized after the Tokyo train attackFrance Press agency

Posted on 10/31/2021 12:16 | Updated 10/31/2021 12:23 PM

Local media reported that a man was arrested on Sunday 31st, after the passengers of the Tokyo train were attacked with a knife and a fire broke out on board.

A video taken on the train and posted on Twitter shows panicked passengers fleeing the flames and smoke invading the wagons.

Another video shows passengers exiting the windows of a Keio Line train that is parked at a station on the western outskirts of the Japanese capital.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) reported that 17 people were injured, one of them in serious condition – a man in his 60s – while Kyodo news agency reported that 15 people were injured.

Japanese media reported that the alleged attacker, aged 20, attacked people with a knife and shot by spilling unidentified flammable liquids on the train.

Asked by AFP, police declined to comment, and Keio Railway said that an “incident involving wounded” occurred just before 8:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. GMT) near Kokiro, on the western outskirts of Tokyo.

“At first I thought it was Halloween. But I ran away when a man armed with a long knife came in. I was lucky I didn’t hurt myself,” one passenger who managed to escape unharmed told AFP.

According to one of the passengers, the assailant did the act without showing any emotion.

“He raised a knife and started spitting out the liquid,” he said. “He did the act without showing any emotion, only mechanically. I think that caused a lot of fear in everyone.”

The attack occurred during the closing of polling stations in the country that held legislative elections on Sunday, as well as in the midst of Halloween parties, which are very popular in the Japanese archipelago.

Dozens of firefighters and police were mobilized.

Cases of violent crime are rare in Japan, where gun legislation is very strict.

However, in August, two more attacks were carried out on public transportation in Tokyo.

Earlier that month, during the Olympics in the Japanese capital, a knife attack on another suburban train injured ten.

And on August 24, two people got burns from sulfuric acid in a metro station in the capital.

In both cases, the Japanese suspects were arrested shortly thereafter.