A computer game based on the recent fatal stabbing of eight children in a Japanese school has been removed from a web site, a spokesman for Yahoo said today.
An unidentified person had put the game, titled Killing Children at Ikeda Elementary School, on the Yahoo portal site following the June 11 school attack, said officials from Yahoo Japan Corp.
Tokyo police asked Yahoo to remove the game, which they deemed offensive to parents of the eight victims as well as others at the school, the officials said.
Seven girls and one boy, aged from six to eight, were killed, and 13 children and two teachers injured, in the attack by a knife-wielding man last week at the Ikeda Elementary School in the suburbs of Osaka, 250 miles west of Tokyo. The 37-year-old suspect, Mamoru Takuma, is a former school janitor with a history of mental illness.
The goal of the game was to "kill as many children as possible", said a police spokesman. The creator of the game "voluntarily" removed it, he added.
It had appeared on a portal site where users can post their own games or home pages for free. The spokesman stressed that Yahoo had not been directly involved.
The attack on the school was the worst mass-killing in Japan since 1995, when a doomsday cult released sarin gas on Tokyo subways, killing 12 people and leaving thousands more ill.
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