A suspected gunman has taken an anonymous number of people hostage inside a post office in Japan, authorities said on Tuesday.
The authorities of the city said on their website, “At approximately 2:15 p.m. today (0515 GMT), a person has taken hostages and holed up at a post office in Chuo 5-chome area of Warabi city… The perpetrator is possessing what appears to be a gun.”
The incident came as police investigated a shooting incident in the same region earlier in the day.
Two people were slightly wounded in that incident, but it was not clear how they were wounded.
Pictures on television showed the man inside the post office in a baseball cap and a white vest under a dark coat, with what looked like a gun attached to a cord around his neck.
Violent crime is vanishingly rare in Japan, in part because of strict regulations on gun ownership.
Japan has one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
But recent years have seen violent crimes, including gun attacks, make headlines in the country, most notably the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July last year.
Abe’s accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, reportedly targeted the politician over his links to the Unification Church.
In April a man was arrested for allegedly hurling an explosive towards Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as he campaigned in the city of Wakayama. Kishida was unharmed.
The following month a man holed up in a building after allegedly killing four people, including two police officers and an elderly woman, in a gun and knife attack.
Masanori Aoki, 31, was taken into custody at his house outside a farm near the city of Nakano in the Nagano region, police said at the time.
Two women and two police officers were killed in the attack.
