By Toru Hani
OSHU, Japan (Reuters) - An earthquake with a magnitude of7.2 struck rural northern Japan on Saturday, killing at leastthree people, officials and televisions said. Several otherswere trapped in hot spring resort hit by a landslide.
The quake, at 8:43 a.m. (12:43 a.m. British time), wascentred in Iwate, a sparsely populated area around 300 km (190miles) north of Tokyo. Dozens of aftershocks also jolted thearea.
"I was outside and I wanted to rush back to the store, butI couldn't move because it was shaking," a liquor store ownertold Fuji TV. "Broken bottles are all over the store, andthere's a smell of alcohol everywhere."
One of the people killed was caught in a landslide, ChiefCabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. A secondwas killed as he ran out of a building and was run over by acar. NHK said another man was killed at a dam construction sitehit by falling rocks.
At least four people were buried in a landslide at a hotspring resort in Kurihara city in hard-hit Miyagi prefecture,TV Asahi reported, though it was unknown whether they weredead.
Three more were missing at a work site after anotherlandslide in Kurihara, Kyodo news agency said, adding that morethan 100 people were hurt.
Water containing a small amount of radiation leaked withina Tokyo Electric Power nuclear power facility in the region,but there was no leakage outside, a spokesman for Japan'sbiggest utility said.
Rail operator JR East said 2,000 were trapped on bullettrains that stopped between stations.
The energy released by the quake was far less than in thecase of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit southwesternChina on May 12, leaving nearly 87,000 people dead or missing.
"The seismic energy of the China quake was one order ofmagnitude greater," Naoshi Hirata, a professor at TokyoUniversity's Earthquake Research Institute, told Reuters.
He cautioned that casualties could rise as reports came infrom isolated areas, but added the region's sparse populationand Japan's strict building standards were likely to keepcasualties and damage limited.
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,prompting tough building codes to try to limit damage.
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.
"I was at home and we had finished eating breakfast," saidAkira Nishimura, an official from the city hall in Kurihara."We got under the table", he said referring to himself, his4-year-old child and his wife.
MORE AFTERSHOCKS EXPECTED
A Japan Meteorological Agency official told a newsconference that aftershocks were likely to continue for sometime.
The government had set up an emergency response centre, theTokyo Fire Department sent a relief team and Iwate GovernorTakuya Tasso asked for help from a military disaster reliefunit.
"We are doing all that we can, involving local governments,the country's Self-Defence Forces (military) and police," PrimeMinister Yasuo Fukuda told reporters. "The most important thingis to rescue people.
Tohoku Electric Power said more than 30,000 people had lostelectricity supplies.
The focus of the magnitude 7.0 tremor was 10 km (6 miles)underground in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, the JapanMeteorological Agency said on its website.(http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/14090100384.html)
Children and teachers at a daycare centre were slightlyinjured, and some highways were closed, Japanese televisionreported, with aerial pictures showing landslides that hadswept through a house and swamped some roads.
In worst hit areas, the earthquake was measured at an upper6 on a Japanese intensity scale, which measures ground motion.It may be impossible to keep standing in a quake with thatreading, the meteorological agency says.
"It shook for about two minutes," Kazue Hishiya, manager ofa hotel in Iwate prefecture, said by telephone.
"Three television sets fell off shelves, elevators havestopped, and we've turned off the boiler."
Another Kurihara city official said that a Japanese-styleinn had been hit by a landslide, blocking the first floor, andthat guests had moved to the second floor.
A JR East spokesman said it could take nine hours tocomplete safety checks and resume bullet train services.
An official at Tohoku said its nuclear plants at Onagawaand Higashidori were running as usual.
Top Japanese refiner Nippon Oil's 145,000 barrel-per-daySendai refinery appeared not to have been damaged after thequake, a company official said. The refinery is currently shutfor scheduled maintenance.
Sony and Fujitsu said they had stopped production atsemiconductor factories in the region but had not found anydamage so far.
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.
(Additional reporting by Isabel Reynolds, Yoko Kubota,Linda Sieg, Yuzo Saeki, Chikafumi Hodo, Osamu Tsukimori andNathan Layne; Writing by Hugh Lawson; Editing by Rodney Joyceand Jerry Norton)
