Six people were injured when their hands got caught in a damaged escalator at JR Akihabara Station in Tokyo on Wednesday, police said.

At around 9:25 a.m., three men and three women got their hands pinched between the escalator's handrail and a 50-cm-long metal lip on the inside that had gotten twisted and upturned, the police said.

Three of them lost thumbnails.

The escalator, which is about 13 meters long, connects the Keihin Tohoku and Yamanote lines to the Chuo and Sobu lines above, according to East Japan Railway Co.

Of the six who were injured, a man in his 70s and the three women in their 20s were rushed to a hospital.

The railway shut down the escalator immediately after the accident.

JR East employees didn't notice anything unusual when they turned on the escalator at around 4 a.m. that morning.