Typhoon Etau roared over Japan's main island of Honshu yesterday, leaving at least eight people dead or missing and 71 others injured while snarling airline and rail traffic, officials said.
Four people have been confirmed dead and four others missing as the storm system continued moving northeast at a speed of 55kph slamming onto the smaller island of Shikoku from the Pacific late Friday.
The eye of the typhoon, with the maximum velocity of its winds down to 90kph, was located near the city of Yamagata, 300km northwest of Tokyo, at 6pm, the Meteorological Agency said.
Etau was projected to dwindle into a tropical depression and veer out to the Pacific off the northernmost island of Hokkaido early today, the agency said.
The National Police Agency (NPA) said 15 houses had been damaged and 815 others flooded. Torrential rains triggered 113 landslides and collapsed roads at 18 points.
An official at the NPA security division said that a 45-year-old truck driver was blown off a highway bridge by strong winds into the sea and drowned yesterday in Osaka. He was trying to adjust his cargo.
Elsewhere, a 63-year-old farmer drowned Friday after falling into a swollen river near his rice paddy in Okayama in the west of Honshu.
A woman in Mie, a prefecture on the Pacific side of Honshu, died after strong winds blew her off a terrace into a garden at her home and the body of a 71-year-old man was found Friday in a swollen river in Kochi on Shikoku.
On Shikoku, two construction workers were swept away while clearing a drainage channel and a 17-year-old boy was washed from a pier by a huge wave Friday, the police official said.
In Nagano, central Japan, a 54 year-old angler was lost in raging water yesterday.
Thousands of weekend travellers have been stranded at airports and train stations.
Airline officials said 464 domestic flights were cancelled.
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