Japan earthquake kills at least 13, rescuers search collapsed mall

At least 13 people died after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan, and rescuers went into a collapsed Aeon mall where witnesses said the second floor gave way. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said rescuers were in a "race against time" as crews searched through rubble and assessed damage across the region.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the inland quake hit Kyushu at 16:27 local time, or 07:27 GMT. More than 150,000 people were told to move to evacuation shelters, and brief tsunami warnings were issued before being lifted, a rapid warning response that underscored how quickly authorities moved to limit risk even as the shock was still unfolding.

The quake also knocked out services across a wide area, with almost 200,000 households without power. That scale of outage exposed the strain on infrastructure beyond the immediate collapse sites, while the scene at the Aeon Mall in Kumamoto showed how a single building can become the focal point for both rescue operations and a wider judgment on construction standards.

The mall had just reopened for a "fresh start" after being rebuilt from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, which Kumamoto University said hit on April 14 and April 16 and reached peak seismic intensity 7. The university said those quakes caused the most serious damage in the prefecture’s recorded history; Reuters and other reporting on that disaster said 28 people were killed and 278 casualties were recorded, including 223 disaster-related deaths. The new collapse turned that recovery story into a fresh test of whether rebuilding had outpaced the region’s seismic threat.

Munetaka Murakami, the Yakult Swallows star from Kumamoto, was also drawn into the moment, as he looked to help his hometown after the devastation. For a prefecture still defined by the memory of 2016, the latest quake measured not only the force of the ground but also the durability of the systems meant to keep people safe.