TOKYO, Dec. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- A 12-year-old girl was stabbed to death by a teacher at a cram school in the western Kyoto prefecture Saturday morning, Kyodo News reported.

    

Police investigators inspect an entrance of a cram school where a 12-year-old Japanese schoolgirl was stabbed to death by a man wielding a kitchen knife in Uji city in Kyoto, Japan, December 10, 2005. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

    The 23-year-old teacher named Yu Hagino has been arrested by police.

    Hagino said he killed Sayano Horimoto because of a verbal dispute and then called the police himself, according to the report.

    

(Xinhua/AFP photo)

    This is the third case involving the death of junior schoolgirls in the past several weeks.

    A 30-year-old Peruvian was suspected of strangling a 7-year-oldgirl to death on Nov. 22 at his home in the southern Hiroshima prefecture, and abandoning the box containing the body at a nearby lot.

    Early this month, another 7-year-old girl went missing on her way home from school in the Tochigi prefecture near Tokyo. Afterwards, her body, with 10 stabbing wounds, was found in an untraveled woodland about 60 kilometers away in the Tochigi prefecture. No suspect has been arrested as yet. Enditem