Six found dead in Japan as internet group suicide pacts escalate

SIX people were found dead in two cars over the weekend in Japan’s latest group suicides.

A woman and two men in their 20s were found slumped in a car parked at an isolated forest in Fukuoka, 560 miles south west of Tokyo, yesterday.

Several portable charcoal stoves were found on the floor of their car and the three occupants were found to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, police said.

The car windows were sealed shut from the inside with vinyl tape and investigators also found suicide notes from the three.

In a separate case, hundreds of miles away in Hyogo prefecture, three men were found dead in a small car parked near a vegetable patch.

Their vehicle also had its windows sealed with tape and charcoal stoves on the floor, local police spokesman Tomohiro Okubo said.

Okubo said it was not immediately known whether the two suicide cases were related. Police are investigating how the victims in each group met.

The cases were the latest in a string of suicide agreements, many made by people who met over the internet.

In October, a group of seven committed suicide together.

Officials say suicide pacts of a similar nature have been made over the internet since at least the late 1990s, and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands.

But they’ve been happening in Japan in especially large numbers, where suicides have jumped to record highs in the wake of a prolonged economic slump in the 1990s.

According to the National Police Agency, 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting each other over the internet between January 2003 and June 2004.

Suicides in Japan last year exceeded 32,000 to mark a record high.