Moderate quake jolts Japan, five injured

Yokkaichi (Japan), Apr 15: A moderate earthquake jolted central and western Japan today, injuring at least five people and damaging houses.

An official at Kameyama City, one of the sites hardest hit by the magnitude 5.4 quake, said two people were injured and 46 houses and other buildings had suffered partial damage.

Some 4,300 households in the region suffered a temporary power outage and five people overall were hurt, Kyodo news agency said.

The focus of the tremor that occurred at 12:19 p.m. was 16 km below the surface of the earth, in Mie Prefecture, about 300 km west of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

''The shaking was like a big thud,'' said Motoko Asada, a 56-year-old housewife in Yokkaichi City, just east of Kameyama and where one house had been badly damaged.

''Luckily, nothing fell and there's been no damage to my house,'' Asada told Reuters.

About six hours later, a tremor with preliminary magnitude of 4.5 jolted the same area, the JMA said.

Two people in Kameyama were injured by the first quake after a part of a ceiling fell in a restaurant, and a stone wall of a 16th century castle had partially collapsed, the city official said.

Kameyama is home to Sharp Corp.'s flagship liquid crystal display factory and the region is often called ''Crystal Valley'' because there are numerous LCD parts and materials suppliers located there to feed into the Sharp plant.

Sharp, the world's third-largest LCD TV maker, said it had halted operations at the Kameyama plant for safety checks, but resumed work after confirming there had been no damage to the facility.

The high speed bullet train service was also briefly halted for checks but resumed service, and some highways were temporarily closed for inspections.

Late last month, a 6.9-magnitude quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, about 300 km west of Tokyo, killing one person, injuring more than 200 people and destroying many homes.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

REUTERS