Police on Friday raided 35 homes and offices belonging to members of a radical leftist group in connection with a 1998 rocket attack on New Tokyo International Airport in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, police said.
The raids in Tokyo, Chiba and nine other prefectures were apparently carried out to update police records on Kakurokyo, a leftist group that has been experiencing infighting among its members in recent months.
Members of the group are suspected of having fired two rockets and a bullet at the airport from the parking lot of a neighboring hotel on Feb. 2, 1998.
The rockets, which crashed into a warehouse area, slightly wounded an employee and caused the temporary closure of the airport, police said.
In February, a 48-year-old male member of the group was stabbed to death on a platform in JR Manazuru Station in Kanagawa Prefecture. Three suspects in the stabbing, believed to be members of Kakurokyo, are still at large, police said.
Kakurokyo was organized around 1980 and supports farmers who are opposing the construction of a Narita airport runway scheduled to be built on their farms.