A Japanese mother was arrested today on suspicion of fatally stabbing two of her child's kindergarten classmates.
The woman (34) had picked up the five-year-old boy and girl to drive them to school along with her own child, who was unharmed, said police in Shiga prefecture, some 356 kilometres west of Tokyo.
The woman has admitted stabbing the two children with a knife she brought with her in the car but gave no reason why she did it, police said.
Wakana Taketomo and Jin Sano were found bleeding from stab wounds, one on a road and the other in an agricultural drainage ditch, by a passerby.
Taketomo was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at hospital, while Sano died several hours later.
The crime is reminiscent of a 1999 murder in which a woman strangled a two-year-old girl out of apparent jealousy towards her mother because the child had been admitted to a prestigious kindergarten. The children were classmates at the same nursery school.
Japan is relatively crime-free, but the nation has been shocked recently by a rising number of murders of small children.
According to NHK national television, 105 children of primary school age or under were killed in the past year.