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Symbolic image: Strong earthquake hits Kumamoto in southwestern Japan, at least 13 deadSymbolic image

Strong earthquake hits Kumamoto in southwestern Japan, at least 13 dead

9 sources

A powerful earthquake struck Kumamoto prefecture on Japan's southern island of Kyushu on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least 13 people and injuring hundreds. About an hour later an explosion tore through a shopping mall in the prefecture, and a factory chimney collapsed, leaving workers missing. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the search a race against time as more than 9,000 people spent the night in evacuation centres.

What happened

The quake struck at 4:27pm local time (0727 GMT) on Tuesday, with its epicentre roughly 20km south of Kumamoto city, a city of about 700,000 people; the USGS put it near the coastal town of Uto. The Japan Meteorological Agency measured magnitude 7.1 and the maximum level 7 on Japan's shindo intensity scale, while the USGS first reported 7.1 and later revised its estimate to 6.8. Authorities issued a tsunami warning of up to one metre for the Ariake and Yatsushiro bays and lifted it within two hours. At the Aeon mall near Kumamoto, which houses around 200 shops and had reopened in June after being rebuilt from the 2016 quakes, part of the second floor collapsed and an explosion followed about 40 to 60 minutes after the tremor; rescuers pulled eight people out, two women in their 20s were confirmed dead, and NHK reported 20 to 30 employees initially unaccounted for. Rescuers said they smelled gas, but a government spokesman said the cause of the blast had not been confirmed. A chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries plant in Yatsushiro, roads, bridges and a wall section of the 17th-century Kumamoto Castle were damaged, around 48,000 households lost power and 140,000 lost water, and plant operator Kyushu Electric Power reported no irregularities at the Sendai and Genkai plants.

The view from outside

Gulf and Turkish outlets carrying AFP and Reuters copy, and Russia's TASS, foreground the industrial and nuclear consequences: reactor status, evacuated TSMC staff and shut Toyota, Honda and Daihatsu plants. Al Jazeera and Daily Sabah place the event in Japan's seismic record, noting the 2016 Kumamoto quakes that killed 273 people and the 2011 disaster at Fukushima. The National highlights the mall blast and eyewitness accounts from the surrounding streets rather than the state response.

What could happen next

By Wednesday morning the government counted 9,186 people in 506 evacuation centres across five prefectures, after about 300,000 residents had been told to leave their homes. Japan's Self-Defense Forces mobilised 3,600 personnel and 20 aircraft, a figure the defence side later put above 4,500 soldiers, with teams concentrating on the mall and the paper mill, where two workers were taken to hospital in cardiac arrest and nine remain missing. The JMA has recorded more than 60 aftershocks of magnitude 1 to 4 and warns of further strong quakes and landslides for about a week, while temperatures above 35C raise the risk of heatstroke for people without power or water. Authorities are investigating the suspected gas explosion, and companies are assessing plant damage, with TSMC saying its staff are safe and operations are resuming.

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