Masked men spray Japan students with powder

TOKYO - Two masked men in a car sprayed white powder at students walking to school in a Japanese city near Tokyo, sending scores of people to hospital complaining of nausea and sore eyes, police said on Wednesday.

Police in the city of Fujisawa, southwest of the capital, said they were investigating the incident and suspected the powder may have been a fire extinguishing agent.

The men drove away after spraying the powder over the students with a hose, Kyodo news agency said. Sixty people were taken to hospital, it added.

Relatively crime-free Japan has been horrified by a number of violent attacks on schools over the past few years.

In 2001 an unemployed man stabbed to death eight children and wounded 15 people when he burst into an elementary school classroom in Osaka prefecture, western Japan.

- REUTERS