Japanese police have captured a suspected gunman who holed up at a post office and have rescued a member of staff who was held hostage, NHK television reported on Tuesday. The arrest ended a more than eight-hour standoff with the man, reportedly in his 80s, who entered the post office with a gun in Warabi, north of Tokyo, an hour after a hospital shooting in which two people were wounded in the nearby city of Toda. Hundreds of police had surrounded the building housing the post office. Television footage showed officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests squatting behind the doors of a patrol vehicle parked outside. The footage also showed the suspect – a man wearing a cap and holding a gun – when he appeared briefly at the entrance. Earlier on Tuesday, Saitama prefectural police said two men – a doctor in his 40s and a patient in his 60s – had been wounded after blasts resembling gunfire were heard outside a general hospital in the city of Toda. The victims were both conscious and their wounds were not life-threatening, police said. Kyodo News said the victims were believed to have been inside a consultation room on the first floor when they were attacked, and that cracks had been found in the window. Police said the attacker apparently fired his gun from the street and then fled on a motorcycle. Officers are also investigating a fire that broke out at a residential building near the hospital in Toda around the time of the shooting. Most of the post office staff were able to leave at the beginning of the standoff, but two remained inside. One was seen to leave after about five hours. Police had urged residents near the post office to take shelter at a facility set up by the authorities. About 300 children from a nearby school who usually walk home were taken home by bus as a precaution, local media reported. The city’s authorities said: “At approximately 2.15pm today (05.15 GMT), a person has taken hostages and holed up at a post office in Chuo 5-chome area of Warabi city … The perpetrator is possessing what appears to be a gun. “Citizens near the scene are urged to follow police instructions and evacuate in accordance with police instructions.” Images on television showed the man in the post office, wearing a baseball cap and a white shirt under a dark coat, with what looked like a gun attached to a cord round his neck. Violent crime is rare in Japan, in part because of strict regulations on gun ownership. The country has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. However, in recent years violent crime, including gun attacks, has been making headlines, most notably the assassination of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July last year. Abe’s accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, reportedly targeted the politician over his links to the Unification church. In April, a man was arrested for allegedly hurling an explosive towards the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, as he campaigned in the city of Wakayama. Kishida was unharmed. The following month a man holed up in a building after allegedly killing four people, including two police officers and an elderly woman, in a gun and knife attack. Masanori Aoki, 31, was taken into custody at his house outside a farm near the city of Nakano, in the Nagano region, police said at the time. Two women and two police officers were killed in the attack.