More die in Japan internet suicide pacts

Three people were found dead in a car parked in the middle of a mountain forest, police said Monday, bringing to at least 22 the number of Japanese who have died in internet suicide pacts in less than two months.

The bodies of a man and two women who seemed to be in their 20s were found dead in a car in the hot-spa town of Minakami north of Tokyo on Sunday, a local police spokesman said.

They were believe to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a charcoal stove found in the car, the spokesman said.

Also on Sunday, four Japanese men were found dead in a Tokyo apartment after apparently committing suicide together by burning charcoal in a shuttered room.

The cases appeared to be the latest in a string of group suicides in Japan, some of which have involved strangers who met over the internet to die together.

Six people died earlier in November and nine people were found dead on the single day of October 12.

Japan has the highest suicide rate in the industrialised world, a phenomenon often linked to the lack of cultural taboo about suicide but reluctance to discuss it openly.

Suicide rates have picked up since the economy began to slump in the 1990s, as the once unthinkable idea of economic insecurity has taken hold. Japan registered a record high of 34 427 suicides in 2003.

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