A 38-year-old Japanese man pleaded guilty today to stabbing to death eight school children in June and said he was willing to pay for the crime with his life.
"It is true,'' Mamoru Takuma said of the murder and attempted murder charges he faced at the Osaka District Court in western Japan, according to press reports.
The murder of more than one person can carry the death penalty in Japan.
On June 8th, Mr Takuma ran amok with a butcher's knife in an elementary school in Ikeda city in Osaka prefecture 400 kilometres (250 miles) west of Tokyo, killing eight children and wounding 13 others as well as two teachers.
His defence team plans to argue that Mr Takuma, a psychiatric patient formerly diagnosed as schizophrenic, was not mentally fit to face charges, news reports said.
AFP