TOKYO (Reuters) - A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 jolted northern Japan on Saturday, with Japanese media reporting one person killed in a landslide and four badly hurt.
The quake, at 8:44 a.m. (12:44 a.m. British time), wascentred in a rural area around 300 km (190 miles) north ofTokyo, where buildings were rocked by the tremor.
"I saw some shattered windows and broken roof tiles," acity hall worker in Miyagi prefecture told public broadcasterNHK. "There were no collapsed buildings."
Four people were badly injured near the airport in thenortheast coastal city of Sendai as a bus they were travellingin was jolted by the earthquake, TV reported.
Bullet train services in the region were halted, thoughnuclear power plant operations were unaffected. Aftershockswere continuing.
The focus of the tremor was 10 km (6 miles) underground inIwate and Miyagi prefectures, the Japan Meteorological Agencysaid.
Children and teachers at a daycare centre were injured, andsome highways were closed, Japanese television reported.
No tsunami warning was issued after the quake at 8:44 a.m.(2354 GMT), but NHK TV reported that bullet trains in the areahad stopped running.
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc, Japan'sbiggest utility, said two of the company's nuclear power plantsin Fukushima prefecture, just south of Miyagi prefecture, wererunning as usual and there were no disruptions from the quake.
An official at Tohoku Electric Power Co Inc said itsnuclear plants at Onagawa and Higashidori were also operatingas usual.
The earthquake was judged an upper 6 on the Japaneseintensity scale, which measures ground motion. It may beimpossible to keep standing in a quake with that reading, themeteorological agency says.
"There was a strong vertical tremor, nothing after that," amunicipal worker told NHK.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's mostseismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 peopleand injuring more than 3,000.
That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremorhit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.
(Writing by Hugh Lawson; Editing by Rodney Joyce andMichael Watson)
