BEIJING ¨C Two employees of Japanese real estate developer Mori Building were wounded in a knife attack in Shanghai on Tuesday, the company¡¯s president, Shingo Tsuji, said Wednesday.
In the incident, two Japanese nationals and a Chinese citizen were attacked at around noon at a Japanese restaurant in a building developed by the company. The suspect, a 59-year-old man, was detained by police.
¡°I¡¯d like to express my heartfelt sympathy to those who were affected in the truly brutal incident,¡± Tsuji said at a news conference.
Local police have not disclosed what triggered the attack.
At a separate news conference on the same day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun did not clarify whether the attacker specifically targeted Japanese people, saying only that the incident was an individual security case and that the investigation was ongoing.
Guo said that the media should not cause a groundless commotion, in a veiled swipe at Japanese media reports on the incident.
The attack has fueled concerns among Japanese residents in China, at a time when anti-Japanese sentiment is rising on the back of deteriorated Japan-China relations.
¡°I can¡¯t get peace of mind because I don¡¯t know where people with anti-Japanese views are,¡± said a Japanese woman in her 40s who lives in Beijing. ¡°I¡¯m worried that similar attacks may happen again.¡±
In June 2024, a Japanese mother and child were attacked with a knife while waiting for a school bus in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. A Chinese woman was killed in the incident.
In September that year, a Japanese boy was stabbed to death on his way to school in Shenzhen, in a case?Chinese authorities described as an isolated random incident.
China executed the attackers in both cases without clarifying whether they had targeted Japanese nationals.
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