A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 rocked rural northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least five people, injuring more than 200 and sending landslides sweeping down mountainous hillsides.
Water containing a small amount of radiation leaked within a Tokyo Electric Power Co nuclear power facility during the quake. The water leaked out from the pool in the warehouse that kept of radioactive waste at TEPCO's Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant, an official at Fukushima Daini said.
"No water has leaked outside of the warehouse," the official said, adding TEPCO has confirmed that there was no impact on the environment.
The earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.2 jolted northern Japan at 8.43 am (12.43am Irish time). Tohoku's Onagawa plant, located in Miyagi prefecture, has three units with a combined capacity of 2,174 megawatts.
One of the people killed was caught in a landslide, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. A second man was hit by a car after running out of a building, and a third was killed by falling rocks at a dam construction site.
A fourth person died when a car was buried under a landslide, a local official said. Two others were rescued and taken to hospital, but another car was still buried, he added.
Two people out of three missing at a work site in Kurihara after a landslide had been found and were in cardiac arrest, a local official said. Kyodo news agency said they were dead.
NHK national TV put the total death toll at five, with 202 people hurt and 10 missing as aftershocks jolted the region, hampering rescue efforts.