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KURIHARA, Japan: Six people were killed in Saturday's powerful earthquake in northern Japan, officials said.
Two workers, aged 53 and 54, were working on a construction project when they were hit by a landslide, said a local official in the hard-hit northern town of Kurihara.
Rescue teams scouring by helicopter also found a body in a smashed vehicle in the mountains, said Yuichi Hachiya, a fire department official in Kurihara.
"We suspect the person was a visitor, but that's just speculation. The person has yet to be identified as the body is now being transferred," Hachiya told AFP.
The other dead included a 48-year-old construction worker on a dam project who was hit by falling rocks and a 55-year-old man buried by a landslide while out fishing, officials said earlier.
A 60-year-old man also died after running out of his home in fright and getting hit by a truck.
Twelve people remained missing including three foreigners, whose nationalities were unclear, who were out camping.
The 7.2-magnitude earthquake tore to pieces a hot-spring resort, which turned into a pile of wooden rubble with access cut off by a landslide.
Five people were rescued from the Komanoyu hotel in a remote scenic forest, two of them with broken bones, but several remained missing, police said.
Ayako Inomata, whose daughter worked there, said she took a helicopter to the resort hotel and found that 31 customers and workers were safe.
"I was so relieved because today I couldn't get through on her mobile or on her landline. But my daughter and her colleagues and other customers there looked OK," Inomata said.
Kyoichi Suzuki, a 50-year-old beekeeper, said he was just 100 metres away from a landslide that buried a car.
"I escaped by a hair's breadth," he said with relief afterwards. "If I had been in that car, I would have been killed."
Japan endures about 20 percent of the world's powerful earthquakes and has built an infrastructure intended to withstand the impact of tremors.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that 14.8 litres (3.8 gallons) of water came out of a pool in which radioactive equipment is stored at a reactor in Fukushima prefecture, but the company said there were no risks to the public.
Japan's land ministry said around five "quake lakes" were formed when landslides blocked rivers. But it said it did not expect dangers from the lakes, which posed a major risk after last month's devastating earthquake in China's Sichuan province.
Masanori Oikawa, a local official in Oshu, said that people in his town were responding calmly, even though they were in shock.
"The jolt was so strong that I couldn't stand without holding onto the wall," he said. "We saw electric poles swinging and the walls of homes were damaged."
"We're used to earthquakes, but this was really scary."
- AFP/so
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