Arson at office building kills at least 24
OSAKA, Japan — In Japan, residents normally assume they can go about their daily lives — riding the train, going to work or visiting a doctor — without worrying about their basic safety. Crime of all varieties is relatively rare, and the murder rate is among the lowest in the world.
But for the third time in less than two months, a suspected arson attack has shaken the country’s sense of security.
At least 24 people died after a fire Friday that burned through a psychiatric clinic in a busy office building in Osaka, the largest city in western Japan. Twenty-eight people were taken to the hospital, and three were in critical condition Friday night.
The fire — which police said may have been set by a man in his 50s or 60s seen carrying a leaking paper bag — came just six weeks after a train rider dressed as the Joker injured 17 people in Tokyo as he attacked passengers with a knife and tried to set a blaze on board.
Early last month, another man was arrested on arson charges after he set a fire on a bullet train in Kyushu, in southern Japan.
Friday’s blaze came two years after the most notorious episode of arson in Japan’s modern history. A fire at an anime studio in Kyoto, not far from Osaka, killed 33 people and injured dozens in one of the country’s worst cases of mass murder in decades.
In that case, as well as the incidents on the Tokyo train line and the bullet train in Kyushu, the suspects told police that they wanted to kill as many people as possible.
Friday’s fire was first reported around 10:20 a.m. and was put out in less than 30 minutes. Rescue workers were seen carrying people out of the building on stretchers, national broadcaster NHK reported, and video footage showed firefighters on ladders stretching up to the sixth floor.
Neither the police nor the Fire Department released any further details about a suspect or a motive.
According to the Fire Department, 80 engines responded to the scene. The blaze burned an area of about 270 square feet of the eight-story downtown building. The fourth floor, where the fire is believed to have begun, was home to a medical clinic.