TOKYO /
At least 19 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 1,000 injured in a second massive earthquake that rocked southwestern Japan early Saturday, local government officials said.
The latest quake was more powerful than the temblor that barely a day earlier killed nine people and left more than 1,000 injured in Kumamoto Prefecture, report Kyodo.
The magnitude-7.3 quake at 1:25 a.m. Saturday registered upper 6 on Japan’s seismic scale of 7 in the prefecture in Kyushu, one of the country’s four main islands, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Seismic experts believe a magnitude 7.3 quake that rocked southwestern Japan in the early hours of Saturday occurred on a separate fault zone from a massive temblor that struck barely
Photo Kyodo
a day earlier, and was triggered by a chain reaction involving a series of tremors.
The 1:25 a.m. earthquake, with the same intensity as the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, was about 16 times as large as a magnitude 6.5 temblor that hit Kumamoto Prefecture Thursday night, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, describing the latest jolt as the main quake and the initial one as a foreshock.
The governmental Earthquake Research Committee concluded Friday that the magnitude 6.5 quake happened on the 81-kilometer-long Hinagu fault zone running along the central part of the island of Kyushu.