A Japanese court has sentenced a former care home employee to hang for stabbing to death 19 disabled people and injuring two dozen others in the deadliest mass attack in post-Second World War Japan.

The 26-year-old man suspected of carrying out a mass stabbing attack that left 19 people dead at a Japanese care home for the mentally disabled has been moved from a local police station to the prosecutor’s office in Yokohama.

The man suspected of carrying out a mass stabbing attack that left 19 people dead at a Japanese care home for the mentally disabled has been moved from a local police station to the prosecutor's office in Yokohama.

At least 19 people were killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack at a centre for disabled people near Tokyo last night - Japan's worst mass killing in generations.