Child massacre 'game' removed from Internet

A computer game modelled on the fatal stabbing of eight children in western Japan has been removed from a Web site, a major Internet service company said today.

An unidentified person had put Killing Children At Ikeda Elementary School on the Yahoo portal site following the June 11 school attack, said Yahoo Japan officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The goal of the game was to ‘‘kill’’ as many children as possible, they said.

Tokyo police on Wednesday afternoon asked Yahoo to remove the game, which they deemed offensive to parents of the eight victims as well as others at the school, the officials said.

The creator of the game ‘‘voluntarily’’ removed it later that day, they said.

It had appeared on a portal site where users can post their own games or home pages for free, they said, stressing that Yahoo had not been directly involved. A Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman refused to comment.

Eight children were killed, and 13 children and two teachers injured in the attack by a knife-wielding man last Friday at the Ikeda Elementary School in the suburbs of Osaka.

The 37-year-old suspect, Mamoru Takuma, has a history of mental illness.

It was the worst mass-killing in Japan since 1995, when a doomsday cult released sarin gas on Tokyo subways, killing 12 people and sickening thousands more.

Osaka is the country’s second-largest city, 253 miles west of Tokyo.