BBC Online: At least two people died and a number were injured after an earthquake jolted southern Japan, toppling buildings and disrupting power supplies. Officials say more people could be trapped under collapsed buildings. About 16,000 homes were left without electricity and 38,000 without gas, reports say. No tsunami warning was issued after the magnitude 6.4 quake, which struck at 21:26 (12:26 GMT) east of Kumamoto city, on the island of Kyushu. Nuclear reactors on the island are not reported to have been affected. The two Sendai nuclear reactors on Kyushu were operating as normal while the three Genkai nuclear reactors still in operation were already closed for routine inspection. The quake struck at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles) and was followed by aftershocks measuring 5.7 about 40 minutes later and 6.4 just after midnight local time. But Japan’s seismology office recorded the shaking at some places to be as intense as the huge magnitude 9 earthquake that hit the country in 2011. That triggered a tsunami in a double disaster that left more than 18,000 people dead or missing and led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. “The shaking was so violent I couldn’t stand still,” Hironobu Kosaki, a local police official, told the Associated Press news agency.
