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Typhoon Meari kills 17 in Japan, eight still missing

Typhoon Meari left 17 people dead, eight missing and 70 injured in its wake after ripping through Japan yesterday, dumping heavy rain and causing mudslides and flooding, weather officials and police said.

The season's 21st typhoon in the Pacific region, and a record eighth to directly hit Japan, has wreaked havoc in southern and western regions of the country since landing on the main southern island of Kyushu on Wednesday.

Meari had shrunk to a temperate depression by noon yesterday and was out of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

The storm bypassed the nation's capital, where blue skies returned, but weather forecasters warned that it was still threatening to cause damage to northern provinces with continued heavy rainfalls.

In Niihama City, Ehime prefecture, some 700km southwest of Tokyo, a 47-year-old woman and her 18-year-old daughter were found dead early yesterday after a mudslide washed away their home.

Two neighbors who tried to rescue them were also killed, according to local police.

In Saijo, Ehime prefecture, the body of a 71-year-old woman was found after she was swept away from her house by floodwaters on Wednesday as a river overflowed, police said.

Four others have also died in Ehime since Wednesday, according to local police.

Another six died in the central Japanese prefecture of Mie.

Of the six, two bodies were recovered near wooden houses destroyed by a mudslide in a remote mountain area of Miyagawa village, local police said.

"Several houses were des-troyed by the mudslide in Miyagawa village," a Mie prefecture police spokesman said. "We cannot even tell whether the victims were inside or outside their homes at the time of the mudslide because the disaster hit the area so hard."

TV footage showed rescue workers searching for the missing near piles of uprooted trees.
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