TOKYO (AFP) - A wild boar spread havoc in a peaceful residential area in southern Japan, upending a man in a wheelchair, biting two pensioners and smashing into both a motorbike and a car, police said.

At least three people were injured in Sunday's (Oct 1) rampage in Sasebo city before the boar, measuring 1.2 metres, was stopped by a local man wielding a golf club and, eventually, police shooters.

During the wild animal's eight-hour reign of terror, it charged at a motorbike, attacked a 59-year-old wheelchair-bound man, and bit an 89-year-old woman on her left thumb and arm, Sasebo police official Yasutaka Urago told AFP.

It also "smashed into a small car, and before getting caught late in the afternoon, bit a 78-year-old man", a member of the local hunting club who tried to stop the beast.

The woman and the man in a wheelchair both suffered broken fingers.

A local man then set about the animal with a golf club before police shot it dead.

"I hit it hard" with an iron club, said the local hero. "I came out to help when I saw the animal biting her on her arm," he told public broadcaster NHK.

Wild boars have increasingly been sighted in Japan's mountainous countryside cities, as observers say the over-development of the mountains has deprived them of their habitat.