Nine found dead in Japan in suspected suicides

TOKYO - Japanese police said on Saturday they were investigating two separate cases of suspected group suicides after nine people were found dead in parked cars, the latest in a series of such cases.

Three men and three women, who all appeared to be in their 20s, were found dead on Saturday in a station wagon parked on a remote road in Miura just west of Tokyo, a police spokesman said.

"We think it's a case of group suicide," he said, adding that officers had found four charcoal stoves and boxes of sleeping pills in the car, which had its windows sealed from the inside. The stoves generate carbon monoxide, a deadly poison.

Separately, in Higashi Izu town in the central prefecture of Shizuoka, police found three people - a man and two women - dead in a parked car, which also had a charcoal stove inside and had the windows sealed.

A local police official said they also suspected the case was a group suicide. He added the three appeared to be in their 30s or 40s.

It was not immediately clear whether there was any connection between the incidents at the two locations, which are about 80km apart.

Japan has been hit by a series of group suicide pacts, many by strangers who only got to know each other through suicide Web sites, and dubbed by the Japanese media as "Internet suicides".

A total of 34 people killed themselves in such pacts in 2003, according to police data.

Japan has one of the highest rates of suicide in the developed world and has no religious prohibitions against a practice long been seen as a way to escape failure. Suicide is also seen as a way of saving loved ones from embarrassment over financial losses.

- REUTERS