A powerful typhoon that barrelled through Japan and threatened the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, killed at least 10 people including a woman aged 101, officials and reports said Thursday. Typhoon Roke, which churned across the main island of Honshu and through the already disaster-ravaged northeast, caused flooding and triggered landslides in an echo of a vicious storm earlier in the month that killed around 100 people.
But it did not cause any further damage to the battered nuclear power plant, as had been feared, its operators said, after workers had scrambled to secure the facility to prevent more radiation from seeping out. News agencies put the death toll at 10, with five missing and hundreds of people injured. Police and rescuers recovered at least four bodies on Thursday morning, including a 65-year-old woman who was buried when a mudslide engulfed her house in Iwate prefecture, officials said.