KUMAMOTO (Japan), July 30 - The death toll from a powerful earthquake that hit Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan earlier this week has reached 28, including cases under investigation for a possible link to the disaster, the top government spokesman said on Thursday, Kyodo News reported.
Search and rescue activities following the magnitude-7.1 quake that occurred on Tuesday evening are "truly a race against time," Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told a press conference in Tokyo.
Meanwhile, rescuers continued working at a collapsed shopping mall and a damaged paper factory on Thursday, where efforts to locate survivors remained under way.
Six people were unresponsive and showed no vital signs. Among the fatalities, five were at an Aeon shopping mall in Kashima, which was rocked by an explosion following the quake, and eight at Nippon Paper Industries Co.'s plant in Yatsushiro, where multiple smokestacks were badly damaged, according to the prefecture.
The Kyushu Shinkansen Line between Kumamoto and Kagoshima-Chuo stations has yet to resume operations as the operator continues to assess the damage.
Meanwhile, it hopes to resume bullet train services between Chikugo-Funagoya Station in Fukuoka Prefecture and Kumamoto Station on Thursday.
As of Wednesday night, thousands of households were without electricity or water, raising concerns about the well-being of evacuees.
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people were staying in evacuation centres as of Thursday morning, the Kumamoto prefectural government said.
Aftershocks continued in the area following Tuesday's earthquake, which registered an upper 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale in Uki and Hikawa at 4.27 p.m.
At that level, people cannot remain standing or move without crawling and may be thrown through the air, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
