KUMAMOTO, July 29 — A 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed at least 13 people near the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto, with rescuers racing to find survivors trapped beneath collapsed buildings, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said today.
"Even now, there are people waiting to be rescued, and this is a race against time. We will marshal all available resources on the ground to save and rescue as many people as possible," Takaichi told reporters in Tokyo, a day after the quake struck.
The latest fatalities raised the death toll from the three reported earlier.
The earthquake cut power to thousands of homes and damaged roads across the region.
Rescuers pulled eight people from the rubble of a partially collapsed shopping mall early today. Two women in their 20s were killed when an explosion of unknown origin tore through the building about an hour after the earthquake.
Authorities are investigating whether the blast was caused by a gas explosion, according to local media.
Emergency fire and rescue teams, police and military personnel were focusing on areas of the mall where calls for help had been received, while the full extent of the disaster remained unclear.
Public broadcaster NHK reported that between 20 and 30 mall workers remained unaccounted for yesterday.
Elsewhere, seven people were reported missing after a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries factory, while four others suffered serious injuries, a local government official said. Hospitals across the region were treating dozens of injured people.
Authorities ordered about 260,000 residents across Kumamoto prefecture to evacuate to emergency shelters.
The earthquake's epicentre was about 20km south of Kumamoto City, the largest city in central Kyushu, with a population of about 700,000.
Authorities warned residents in the worst-hit areas to remain alert for strong aftershocks over the next week and the risk of landslides.
With more than 36,000 homes still without electricity, officials also expressed concern about the risk of heatstroke as temperatures were expected to reach about 34°C today.
Hospitals stretched
A hospital in Uki city near the epicentre said a power outage had left it unable to function normally.
"It's become like a field hospital," the head of its administrative department told NHK.
Another hospital in the city suspended new admissions after receiving 86 injured people, including three with serious injuries.
Several passengers travelling on high-speed trains at the time of the quake were also injured, rail operators said.
The most severe structural damage occurred at the Aeon shopping mall, the largest in Kumamoto prefecture, where one side of the building housing about 200 stores was blown apart, exposing steel beams and scattering debris across the car park.
An Aeon spokesperson said customers and employees had been evacuated immediately after the earthquake and that the cause of the subsequent explosion remained under investigation.
Several major manufacturers with plants in the area, including Tokyo Electron and Honda, suspended operations through today.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, evacuated workers from its local plant as a precaution after the quake but began resuming operations late yesterday.
Major roads also suffered extensive damage, with large cracks appearing on highways and disrupting traffic.
Japan, which lies on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes measuring magnitude 6.0 or higher.
A powerful earthquake that struck Kumamoto a decade ago killed 275 people, injured 2,739 others and damaged thousands of buildings, including Kumamoto Castle, one of the city's best-known landmarks.
