Rescuers in Japan haul survivors from collapsed mall as earthquake toll rises to 13

Rescuers were frantically searching on Wednesday for survivors of a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook southern Japan, killing at least 13 people, knocking out power to thousands of homes and rupturing roads across the region.

Eight people were pulled from the rubble of a partially collapsed shopping mall near the city of Kumamoto that was torn apart by an apparent explosion about an hour after Tuesday’s earthquake. Of them, three have died.

Mall operator Aeon said four workers at the Kumamoto shopping centre remained unaccounted for after checks of the roughly 2,700 staff. Customers had been evacuated right after the initial quake.

Public attention was focused on the collapse of the Aeon mall, the largest in the prefecture.

One side of the mall, which houses around 200 stores, was torn away, exposing steel beams and strewing debris across a parking lot, footage showed.

Some major companies with plants in the area, including Renesas Electronics , Sony, Tokyo Electron and Honda, have suspended operations at their plants.

Toyota Motor also said it would suspend work at three factories outside Kumamoto prefecture through Friday in consideration of the situation at suppliers.

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.

Located on the “Ring of Fire” of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or more.

A massive earthquake in Kumamoto 10 years ago killed 275 people and injured a further 2,739, according to an official count, and damaged thousands of buildings including the walls of the city’s castle, a top tourist site.

The castle was also among several historic buildings damaged in Tuesday’s quakes alongside shrines with heavy tiled roofs that partially collapsed and a 17th-century tea house.