{"id":52999,"date":"2026-07-28T22:14:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=52999"},"modified":"2026-07-28T22:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:14:36","slug":"japan-earthquake-injures-at-least-100-and-traps-many-inside-shopping-mal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2026\/07\/28\/japan-earthquake-injures-at-least-100-and-traps-many-inside-shopping-mal\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan earthquake injures at least 100 and traps many inside shopping mal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has shaken south Japan, leaving at least 100 people injured. Some are trapped and presumed dead inside a shopping mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earthquake hit Kumamoto prefecture on the southern Kyushu island late on Tuesday afternoon, knocking out power to thousands of homes and damaging roads, bridges and buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, told reporters authorities were still assessing the extent of the damage in the area, which was devastated by another deadly quake a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have already been informed that people have been injured. Power outages and fires have occurred in some areas, and there has also been damage to roads and bridges and the collapse of buildings,\u201d Takaichi said. \u201cI ask everyone to take action to protect themselves, including evacuating to a safe location.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aerial<\/a>
A house on fire in Yatsushiro, Japan, on Tuesday after the quake hit. Photograph: Kyodo\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About 300,000 people have been instructed to go to evacuation centres, the disaster management agency said. The areas with the biggest tremors will remain at risk of further strong quakes and landslides for about a week since the shallow earthquake is triggering seismic activity in the area, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far there have been more than 60 aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 1 to 4, the agency said. A tsunami warning was issued immediately after the quake, \u200bbut was lifted within two hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One person was killed in south-west Japan when a house collapsed during the earthquake, Kyodo News reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two hospitals reported \u200bmore than 50 injuries each, including 10 in a serious condition, the public broadcaster NHK said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople are coming in with burns and fractures from being trapped under objects due to the earthquake, and ambulances are constantly bringing in injured people,\u201d NHK quoted one hospital employee as saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInside the hospital, there are water leaks and electrical system failures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several people on a high-speed \u200ctrain at the time of the quake were also \u200cinjured and more were missing after a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries factory, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sanae<\/a>
Japan\u2019s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, speaks to the media at her official residence in Tokyo on Tuesday. Photograph: Kyodo\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An explosion occurred in an Aeon shopping mall shortly after the earthquake, trapping \u201cmany people\u201d, fire services said. The broadcaster TBS reported that police said \u201cquite a few\u201d were presumed dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As night fell, regional officials said they believed 10 people were unaccounted for in the mall, public broadcaster NHK reported. It earlier cited police as saying between 20 and 30 of the mall\u2019s employees could not be contacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takaichi pledged late yesterday that emergency responders would work \u201ctirelessly\u201d through the night \u201cstarting with the rescue and lifesaving of those affected\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Aeon spokesperson said customers and employees were evacuated after the initial quake and the cause of the explosion remained unclear. A government official subsequently told reporters that Aeon Kumamoto reported a gas leak, though it had not yet been determined as the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Footage showed one side of the mall, the prefecture\u2019s largest with roughly 200 shops, was torn away, exposing steel beams \u200cand leaving debris strewn across the neighbouring car park. Several ambulances and fire engines were parked outside as rescue teams searched for survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Damaged<\/a>
A smokestack at Nippon Paper Industries\u2019 Yatsushiro mill collapsed in the 6.8m-magnitude earthquake. Photograph: Kyodo News\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Footage from NHK showed several other buildings on fire or partly collapsed, along with large fissures on \u200cmajor roads, including an elevated highway. TSMC, the world\u2019s largest contract chip maker, Sony and Fujifilm evacuated workers from their factories in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiharu Hara, a 35-year-old recruitment agent who was in Kumamoto, told AFP that she was \u201cterrified\u201d when the quake struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe office swayed violently side to side. I was afraid it would collapse. Everyone panicked,\u201d Hara said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quake\u2019s epicentre was about 12 miles (20km) south of Kumamoto, central Kyushu island\u2019s largest city, with a population of about 700,000. The US Geological Survey initially said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1, but revised it later to 6.8. The tremor at 4.27 pm local time had a magnitude of 7.1, the JMA said, but reached the highest level of 7 on Japan\u2019s shindo scale. A subsequent aftershock with a magnitude of 6.1 was registered at 5.08pm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan, which is located along the \u201cring of fire\u201d of volcanoes and oceanic trenches in the Pacific basin, is one of the world\u2019s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes. The country accounts for about 20% of the world\u2019s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The massive earthquake in Kumamoto 10 years ago killed 275 people and injured a further 2,739. It damaged thousands of buildings including the city\u2019s castle, a popular tourist site. Some of the castle\u2019s stone walls were damaged in the most recent quake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kumamoto<\/a>
Kumamoto castle\u2019s stone walls were damaged by the earthquake. Photograph: Kyodo\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kyushu Electric Power said 48,000 homes had \u200blost power, while \u200bthe railway company JR Kyushu suspended services, including its high-speed bullet trains. Kumamoto airport also shut its runway as airlines diverted and \u200bcancelled flights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The telecoms operators KDDI and NTT Docomo \u200csaid there was disruption to their \u200bmobile phone services owing to power shortages \u200band transmission-line failures. There were no irregularities reported at the nuclear power stations in the area, Japan\u2019s nuclear regulation authority said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Japanese military has mobilised 3,600 personnel for disaster relief operations and sent 20 aircraft to assess the damage from the air, the defence minister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan is haunted by the memory of a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing and wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has shaken south Japan, leaving at least 100 people injured. Some are trapped and presumed dead inside a shopping mall. The earthquake hit Kumamoto prefecture on the southern Kyushu island late on Tuesday afternoon, knocking out power to thousands of homes and damaging roads, bridges and buildings. Japan\u2019s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"theguardian","_post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com","footnotes":""},"categories":[461,12],"tags":[11363,11353,5754,4321,262,11526,13175,12689,9331,9233,6083,5183,12326,7280,12617,9203,8854,11365,6159,9530,5491,5638,2264,10598,6825,5328,11111,11525,2959,9326,9515,10634,5572,6831,9837,6666,5925,11973,7039,10302,2627,421,9374,3174,8174,7650,5807,12209,5882,8840,6264,1705,10740,9616,5755,5353,8594,6348,8869,3954,10415,36],"class_list":["post-52999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news","tag-aircraft","tag-airlines","tag-airport","tag-broadcaster","tag-bullet","tag-burns","tag-car","tag-car-park","tag-city","tag-collapse","tag-dead","tag-debris","tag-decade","tag-earthquake","tag-evacuated","tag-evacuation","tag-explosion","tag-factory","tag-fire","tag-fukushima","tag-gas","tag-gas-leak","tag-government","tag-homes","tag-hospital","tag-hospitals","tag-injured","tag-injuries","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-killed","tag-lost","tag-military","tag-missing","tag-nhk","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-power","tag-one","tag-phone","tag-plant","tag-pm","tag-police","tag-population","tag-prime-minister","tag-railway","tag-recruitment","tag-risk","tag-sanae","tag-steel","tag-strong","tag-survivors","tag-tokyo","tag-tourist","tag-train","tag-trains","tag-trapped","tag-tsunami","tag-us","tag-water","tag-will","tag-work","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53001,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52999\/revisions\/53001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}