A week after huge landslides swamped the city of Hiroshima, the confirmed death toll from the tragedy hit 70 yesterday, with 18 people still missing.
Few hopes remain for those unaccounted for, although the fluctuating number — which has risen and fallen sometimes independently of the number of dead — has left confusion as to the disaster’s likely final cost in human lives.
More than a month’s rain fell in just three hours on Wednesday morning last week, triggering devastating mudslides on hillside communities in the western city.
Dozens of homes were buried or carried away when tonnes of earth, rocks and debris smashed into settlements at a reported 40kph.
At its height, the recovery operation involved more than 3,000 police, firefighters and soldiers.
Among those still officially listed as missing was a newlywed couple who had been expecting their first baby when huge mudslides engulfed their apartment. They had only moved into their new home last month.
Heavy rain has continued on and off since the disaster, hampering search operations amid fears of further landslips as waterlogged hillsides visibly bulged and shifted overhead.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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