Seven young men and women were found dead in a car parked at an isolated mountainside lot near Tokyo early Tuesday in a suspected group suicide, police said. Minutes later, the bodies of two more women who had apparently fulfilled a separate suicide pact were found.

The deaths follow several similar cases recently of groups committing suicide in Japan, often in cars, after meeting via the Internet.

The car in which four men and three women were found dead, is seen at a police station in Chichibu, north of Tokyo October 12, 2004. Japanese police said on Tuesday they were investigating a group suicide in which seven people who got acquainted through the Internet killed themselves. [Reuters]

In the first case Tuesday, a friend of one of the seven who had received an e-mail hinting at suicide called the police but the authorities failed to reach the car in time, a police spokesman in Saitama prefecture said on condition of anonymity.

Investigators found four charcoal stoves in the car which they believe the group used to poison themselves with carbon monoxide, another police spokesman said, also requesting anonymity.

Minutes later, two women were found dead in a car parked outside an isolated temple in Yokosuka, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of the first location, a Kanagawa prefecture police spokesman said. The pair were lying on the car's back seat, with two charcoal stoves sitting on the floor. The car windows had been sealed with a black plastic tarp.

Police said it was not immediately known whether the two cases were related.

They were still investigating the cause of the death and the identities of the men and women, believed to be in their teens and 20s.

The circumstances resembled several other group suicides reported throughout Japan in recent years.

Dozens of Web forums for trading information and advice on suicide have emerged in Japan. There have been several cases of groups of people committing suicide, often with charcoal stoves in cars, after meeting one another on the Internet.

Japan's suicide rates are among the highest in the world. The number of Japanese committed suicide last year exceeded 32,000 to mark the record high. Police did not have figures for Internet group suicides.

Officials have blamed a decade-long economic slump for an increasing number of people killing themselves.

Source: CD/Agencies