Rescue crews ended their search of a collapsed shopping mall in southwest Japan on Saturday after confirming no one remained missing, five days after a suspected gas explosion killed seven people at the site.
Authorities concluded operations at the Aeon mall in Kashima after extracting five survivors and recovering seven bodies from the rubble. The overall death toll from Tuesday's magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture has risen to 36, with 103 injured across the region. Nine workers were confirmed dead after a chimney collapsed at a Nippon Paper Industries factory in Yatsushiro.
The disaster left nearly 70,000 homes without running water and more than 9,000 people in shelters, as extreme heat exceeding 36 degrees Celsius strained emergency services. A magnitude 4.7 aftershock struck Saturday without triggering a tsunami warning.