By Xinhua,
Tokyo : A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 jolted wide areas in northeastern Japan Saturday morning, killing three people and leaving 10 missing.
More than 100 people were injured in the 8:43 a.m. quake, whose epicenter was about 8 km underground in southern Iwate Prefecture.
Japan Meteorological Agency in the afternoon revised the magnitude of the earthquake up to 7.2 from the original 7.0.
Among the three dead, one was killed in a traffic accident when running out of residence, one was killed in landslide, and one was hit by rolling rocks, local press said.
TV footage showed that the quake engendered several landslides and the collapse of a bridge in Kurihara city of Miyagi Prefecture, south of Iwate Prefecture. The earth caved in a mountainous region, destroying roads. In several places, roads were broken or buried.
Most of the ten missing were likely buried under the landslides, reports said.
A series of minor and moderate aftershocks aggravated the damages, reports said.
At a hot spring resort in Miyagi Prefecture, seven people were waiting to be rescued in a hotel stranded by a huge landslide.
About 150 disaster relief teams from the Ground Self-Defense Force and more than a dozen other prefectures were dispatched to the stricken areas.
Train services on most sections of the Tohoku Shinkansen Line were suspended shortly after the quake, but have been resumed. Meanwhile, all expressways in Miyagi Prefecture have been closed.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said at a press conference in the morning that blackout affected about 29,000 households in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures.
National broadcaster NHK quoted authorities as saying that two nuclear power plants in Fukushima Prefecture were not affected.
The quake, which engendered no tsunami warning, could be felt in almost all areas of the northeastern part of the Honshu Island, including Tokyo, and some part of Hokkaido Prefecture.