Six in suspected Tokyo suicide
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-05 15:48

Japanese police are investigating a suspected group suicide after six people were found dead in a parked car, the latest in a series of such cases.

The 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.

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.

It was not clear whether those found dead in Saturday's case made contact through the Internet.

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.

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