At least 10 people died and dozens were injured as Typhoon Halong slammed into Japan over the weekend, reports said yesterday, with heavy rain still lashing the country’s north.
The storm moved over the East China Sea — which Tokyo calls the Sea of Japan — yesterday, after making landfall on the country’s largest and most populous island, Honshu, at the weekend, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Halong’s outer bands continued to lash northern Japan with heavy rain as officials warned of landslides, floods and possible tornadoes in the area.
Photo: EPA
The agency downgraded the typhoon to a tropical storm at 9am yesterday as it headed toward Russia’s far eastern coast.
Along with heavy rain last week, Halong killed two people and injured 86 across the country, public broadcaster NHK reported, but the Nikkei Shimbun said as many as 10 deaths were linked to the storm.
Among the victims was an Iranian man whose body was found in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo, while two women died in the country’s west, the Nikkei said.
The National Police Agency confirmed that the storm and last week’s rain killed at least two people and left two others missing.
The Japanese Coast Guard yesterday resumed searching for a man who went missing, apparently while surfing during the storm off Wakayama.
In Osaka, Halong forced the cancelation of a major fireworks event on Saturday after the storm washed away 21 launching boats, about half of them carrying unused pyrotechnics, a spokesman for the show said.
The Osaka City Disaster Prevention Bureau said four workers also drifted away on the boats, but were later confirmed to be safe.
On Sunday, violent winds destroyed more than 460 buildings in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, injuring at least two, NHK said. Weather agency officials are investigating if those winds were generated by a tornado.
Airline services largely returned to normal yesterday, with only a handful of flights canceled after more than 700 were called off during the weekend.
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