A 39-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman were found dead Friday in a station wagon parked on a forest road in the village of Nosegawa, Nara Prefecture, after apparently making a suicide pact via the Internet, police said Monday.

The man from Osaka and the woman from Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, both unemployed, are believed to have become acquainted on an Internet site for people seeking suicide partners, a phenomenon that has occurred in various places in Japan in recent months, according to police.

Two portable clay cooking stoves containing burned coal briquettes were in the vehicle, they said.

The victims appeared to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Police found evidence on the man's mobile phone left in the vehicle that he had been seeking a suicide mate and that the woman responded to his communication.