A new military recruit yesterday shot and killed two fellow soldiers and wounded a third at a training range in central Japan, the military said, with the 18-year-old suspect detained at the scene.
“During a live-bullet exercise as part of new personnel training, one Self-Defense Forces [SDF] candidate fired at three personnel,” the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) said in a statement, confirming two deaths.
The shooter was an 18-year-old SDF candidate who joined the military in April, GSDF Chief of Staff Major General Yasunori Morishita told reporters, adding that he was detained at the scene by other soldiers.
Photo: AP
“This kind of incident is absolutely unforgivable for an organization tasked with handling weapons, and I take it very seriously,” Morishita said.
He said the three victims had been tasked with training new recruits, including the attacker, at the range, without further elaborating on their relations.
The suspect, whose identity is being withheld, has been charged with the attempted murder of a 25-year-old soldier, a local police spokesman said, declining to be identified.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The cadet “fired a rifle at the victim with the intent to kill,” the spokesman said.
National broadcaster NHK reported that the casualties were a man in his 50s and two men in their 20s.
Aerial footage broadcast by the station showed military and civilians gathered around an emergency vehicle and police blocking nearby roads.
Some appeared to be investigators, wearing covers over their shoes and hair.
A local resident told NHK that he saw several emergency vehicles rushing to the area at about 9:30am, but had not heard anything before that.
Morishita said that as far as he is aware, gun violence by GSDF personnel that resulted in injuries or fatalities last took place in 1984 at a camp in Yamaguchi.
The training range is administered by the region’s Camp Moriyama and is a covered facility of more than 65,000m2.
Gun possession is tightly controlled in Japan, where violent crime is rare.
In July last year, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead on the campaign trail by a man who allegedly targeted him over his links to the Unification Church.
The accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, was due to make his first appearance in court this week, but the session was canceled after a package sent to the facility set off a metal detector.
It was later found to contain no explosives, but rather a petition signed by thousands calling for a lenient sentence for Yamagami.
In April, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida escaped unharmed after a man threw an explosive device toward him at a campaign event.
Last month, a man killed four people, including two police officers, in an hours-long knife and shooting spree in the Nagano region west of Tokyo.
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