JAPANESE police were Wednesday investigating suspected “terror” attacks on former top pension bureaucrats after three people were stabbed on their doorsteps, two of them fatally, officials said.

Police were on high alert guarding top bureaucrats a day after a 61-year-old former deputy welfare minister and his wife were found dead with stab wounds at their home in Saitama, north of Tokyo.

The wife of another 76-year-old former vice welfare minister was also stabbed and seriously wounded on her doorstep late Tuesday by a man pretending to be from a parcel delivery service.

Government officials said the attacks could be politically motivated.

“They must be terror attacks,” said the secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Hiroyuki Hosoda, noting that two former bureaucrats were targeted.

Both officials once served as directors at the welfare ministry’s troubled pension division, raising the possibility that the attacks are linked to the loss of millions of pension payment records.

“A connection between the two incidents has not been established but police are making investigations taking into account the possibility of serial terror attacks,” chief government spokesman Takeo Kawamura said.

(SD-Agencies)