TOKYO: Japanese police arrested a man on Thursday after a car crashed through a barrier near the Israeli embassy in Tokyo, local media reported.
Video footage appeared to show that the small car had crashed through a temporary barrier and into a fence at an intersection around 100 meters (109 yards) from the embassy.
Media also reported that one police officer was lightly injured.
The man arrested on the spot is a member of a right-wing group and in his 50s, the reports said.
Right-wing groups in Japan are generally not known for being critical of Israel or anti-Semitic.
A fire department spokesperson said only that they received “an emergency call (for an ambulance) for 3-11 Nibancho, Chiyoda ward came at 11.57 (am).”
Police declined to comment and the Israeli embassy could not be reached.
“Around 11:00 am, I heard a huge bang, so I went outside to check out. Then I saw a policeman injured and in pain near the traffic barrier and it looked like he was bleeding. There was also a black car parked nearby,” a restaurant employee working near the embassy told public broadcaster NHK.
Countries around the world have stepped up security around Israeli diplomatic missions since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7.
Israel launched an offensive in Gaza offensive in retaliation for Hamas’s brutal October 7 attacks, which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
With Hamas-controlled authorities claiming the death toll from the offensive has now topped 11,500, including thousands of children, calls for a truce are mounting.
Japan last week supported a joint call by Group of Seven foreign ministers for “humanitarian pauses” in the conflict.
On Thursday, in response to the Israeli army’s operation at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, Japan’s foreign ministry said: “We feel strong indignation on tremendous damage to innocent civilians. Attacks against hospitals or civilians cannot be justified on any ground.”
Japan had previously condemned the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, offering “its condolences to the bereaved families and expresses its heartfelt sympathies to the injured.”
Man arrested after car crashes near Israeli embassy in Tokyo: Media
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Man arrested after car crashes near Israeli embassy in Tokyo: Media
- Media also reported that one police officer was lightly injured
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
