About 1,000 aluminum dishes and bowls for school lunches that were to be discarded have been stolen from a school lunch center here, police said.

Investigators suspect that the thief stole them in a bid to sell them as metal prices are rising on the international market, and are searching for the culprit.

The incident follows a spate of thefts of drain covers, electric wires and bells on fire-watch towers among other metal objects across the country over the past several months.

At around noon on Thursday, a 54-year-old worker at the municipal school lunch center noticed about 1,000 aluminum dishes and bowls, totaling about 235 kilograms, had disappeared from its scrap yard in the Hattori district of Toyonaka, local police said.

The Toyonaka Municipal Board of Education that manages the center alerted police. The dishes and bowls were to be disposed of later this month, investigators said.

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By Sun Tzu on 12-03-2007