At least 13 people have died due to the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck early Tuesday in the prefecture of Kumamoto, on the Japanese island of Kyushu.
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This was confirmed early Wednesday by the Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, in statements to the media in which she assured that the government will mobilize all available resources to save and rescue as many people as possible, according to local media such as The Japan Times newspaper or the NHK television network.
In turn, Takaichi reported “widespread” damage in the form of collapsed buildings, fires, and havoc on the roads in the area affected by the earthquake.
Regarding the fatalities, hours earlier the Kumamoto Prefecture confirmed that two women in their 20s died in a shopping center, presumably the AEON Mall in the city of Kashima, which collapsed and where an explosion occurred just after the movement.
Prior to that, the police of the mentioned prefecture reported finding a person alive among the rubble of a collapsed house in the town of Yatsushiro who, however, later died in the hospital, according to the Japanese network Asahi.
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Japanese authorities have deployed in the affected areas “approximately 3,600 personnel” from the Armed Forces, the Prime Minister specified at the end of a command post meeting to respond to the emergency, established during the day.
This earthquake occurred at 16:27 (local time and 03:27 a.m. in Chile) and had its hypocenter at a depth of 10 kilometers. It was also followed by a second earthquake of magnitude 6.1, also in Kumamoto, at 17:08 (local time) and at shallow depth.
In total, about 48,000 homes have been affected by a major blackout and another 500 have suffered gas supply cuts.
