Japan knife attacker grins before cameras

Tokyo : A Japanese man who admitted murdering 19 people at a centre for the mentally disabled grinned at news cameras Wednesday before being questioned over the country's worst killing spree in decades.

Police searched the home of the 26-year-old, who reportedly said he wanted all disabled people to "disappear", after the knife rampage that left his victims in pools of blood, including some who were stabbed in the neck.

With a blue jacket draped over his head, Satoshi Uematsu was escorted out of a police station into a waiting van before a crowd of flashing cameras.

Inside the vehicle with the jacket removed, he smiled broadly in footage broadcast on morning news shows.

Uematsu's self-styled mission to rid the country of the mentally disabled -- laid out earlier this year in a long letter that came to light Tuesday -- has shocked Japan, as has the carnage at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en centre in the city of Sagamihara, outside Tokyo.

An official at the Tsukui police station where Uematsu was held after the attack declined to comment on the investigation, only confirming that he was being transported to prosecutors for questioning.

Plainclothes police officers were seen searching his house where yellow tape declared it a no-entry zone. The two-storey dwelling is in the same neighbourhood as the care centre.

Local media said Uematsu has told police that he wants to apologise to bereaved families about the sudden loss of their loved ones, though he still justified what he did.

"I saved those with multiple disabilities," he told police, according to private broadcaster TV Asahi, citing investigative sources.

Uematsu broke into the care centre in the forested hills of Sagamihara in the early hours of Tuesday.