A man sentenced to death in China over an attack on two Japanese people that left a Chinese woman dead has been executed, people familiar with relations between Japan and China said Thursday.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry informed the Japanese Embassy in China of the execution on Wednesday. The specific date and time of the execution remain unknown.
Zhou Jiasheng was convicted of intentional murder over the incident last June, in which he attacked with a knife a Japanese woman and her child waiting at a bus stop for a Japanese school in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province in eastern China.
The two Japanese were injured, while a female Chinese bus guide was killed after trying to aid them.
A Chinese district court handed down the capital punishment on Jan. 23, finding that Zhou attacked the three people because he was tired of living in debt. But it did not clarify whether the man had targeted Japanese people specifically.
Zhou did not appeal the ruling.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday, "The crime is absolutely unforgivable, and we take the execution of the sentence seriously."
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