- 7.1-magnitude jolt rocked southern Japan
- Workers missing at quake-hit mall and paper mill
- Thousands of homes still without power
- Multiple buildings collapsed, caught fire
Japan earthquake: People missing in collapsed buildings
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed at least 13 people near the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto and rescuers are frantically searching for survivors trapped beneath the rubble, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi says.
"Even now, there are people waiting to be rescued, and this is a race against time. We will marshall all available resources on the ground to save and rescue as many people as possible," Takaichi told reporters at her office in Tokyo a day after the quake struck, raising the toll from three deaths reported earlier.
The quake knocked out power to thousands of homes and ruptured roads across the region. Rescuers pulled eight people from the rubble of a partially collapsed shopping mall early on Wednesday (all times local). Two women in their 20s were killed as an apparent explosion of unknown origin ripped the mall apart about an hour after the earthquake.
Authorities are investigating a possible gas explosion, local media reported.
Emergency fire rescue teams, police and army personnel were focusing on areas of the building where calls for help had been received. The full extent of the disaster remained unclear. Around 20 to 30 mall workers were unaccounted for on Tuesday, public broadcaster NHK said.
Seven people are also missing after a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries factory, while four others are seriously injured, a local government official said. Hospitals were reported to be treating dozens of patients.
Across the prefecture, which also suffered a deadly earthquake a decade ago, around 260,000 people were instructed to go to evacuation centres, authorities said.
The quake's epicentre was about 20 kilometres south of Kumamoto City, central Kyushu's largest city with a population of around 700,000.
Authorities have warned residents in the areas that felt the biggest tremors to be on alert for further strong quakes for about a week, as well as for the risk of landslides.
With more than 36,000 homes still without power, authorities are worried about the risk of heat stroke as temperatures soar to around 34 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Some hospitals overstretched
One hospital in Uki city, near the epicentre, said a power outage caused by the earthquake meant it was unable to function.
"It's become like a field hospital," the head of the administrative department told NHK. Another hospital in the city said it had suspended admissions as it could no longer handle additional emergency cases after accepting 86 injured people following the quake, including three with serious injuries.
Several passengers aboard high-speed trains at the time of the quake were also injured, operators said.
But it was the Aeon mall, the largest in the prefecture, that was the most eye-catching disaster.
One side of the mall, which houses around 200 stores, was torn away in the blast, exposing steel beams and strewing debris across a parking lot, footage showed.
A spokesperson for mall operator Aeon said customers and employees were evacuated right after the initial quake and that the exact cause of the ensuing explosion was unclear.
Aeon shares fell 1.9 percent in early trading in Tokyo. The benchmark index was up 0.8 percent.
Some major companies with plants in the area including Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor equipment maker, and Honda said they would suspend operations at their plants through Wednesday. TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, evacuated workers from its local plant as a precaution after the quake but said it had begun resuming operations late on Tuesday.
Some roads were also badly damaged, with large cracks splintering major highways and snarling traffic on Tuesday evening.
Power outages, fires
Earlier in the day, Chiharu Hara, a 35-year-old recruitment agent who was in Kumamoto, told AFP that she was "terrified" when the quake struck.
"The office swayed violently side to side. I was afraid it would collapse. Everyone panicked," Hara said.
Footage verified by AFP showed heavy vehicles, street lights and traffic lights swaying. Elsewhere, vehicles on a two-lane road in the province were seen carefully navigating sections of buckled pavement.
Many roads were closed and high-speed shinkansen train services were suspended in the region affected by Tuesday's quake. Kumamoto airport was closed for several hours before re-opening in the evening.
Two hospitals reported taking in at least 50 injured patients each, it said.
"People are coming in with burns and fractures from being trapped under objects due to the earthquake, and ambulances are constantly bringing in injured people," NHK quoted one hospital employee as saying.
"Inside the hospital, there are water leaks and electrical system failures."
The broadcaster also said that around 10 people were hurt at a nursing home for the elderly.
"Human casualties, building collapses, road damage, fires... have been confirmed so far," Takaichi said on X, adding there were also "water and power outages".
The Japanese military has mobilised 3600 personnel for disaster relief operations and sent 20 aircraft to assess the damage from the air, the defence minister said.
Verified footage shared on social media showed parts of a wall at the centuries-old Kumamoto Castle collapsing.
No immediate abnormalities were recorded at nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said.
About 45,000 households and facilities had no power in the Kumamoto region, according to local utility Kyushu Electric Power.
The firm said three nuclear reactors operating in the region at the time were functioning normally.
'Ring of Fire'
A local NHK staffer wearing a helmet reported live on air that the shaking was continuing around half an hour after the quake, with the newsroom rocking so violently that it was difficult to remain standing.
"Including myself, there may be some people who feel their hearts racing," the staffer said.
Kumamoto was hit by two devastating earthquakes in 2016 - one of magnitude 6.5, followed two days later by one of magnitude 7.3 - which killed 273 people and injured more than 2800.
Japan is one of the world's most seismically active countries, sitting on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific "Ring of Fire".
The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, typically experiences hundreds of jolts every year and accounts for about 18 percent of the world's earthquakes.
The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and the depth below the Earth's surface at which they strike.
Japan is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that killed or left missing around 18,500 people and wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant.