Rescue crews recovered three more bodies from landslides and a river in southern Japan Monday, raising to 10 the death toll from disasters brought by heavy rains over the weekend, police said.
The bodies of a man and a woman were pulled from a car buried when a mudslide hit a Kyushu island road, a Fukuoka prefecture police official said.
Police also recovered the body of a five-year-old boy who was swept away in a swollen river on Sunday, the official said.
Search operations resumed Monday in Fukuoka for a 61-year-old woman and her daughter, 34, feared buried under mud after their home was hit by a landslide.
Earlier last week, landslides and floods triggered by heavy rains killed at least 16 people in Yamaguchi prefecture on western Honshu island.
The latest victim found was a woman whose remains were recovered Monday from a nursing home for the elderly that was hit by a large landslide last week. Two people were still listed as missing in Yamaguchi.
An unusual weather disaster also hit central Japan, where tornado-like gusts injured 18 people, overturned at least 20 vehicles, shattered windows and damaged some 68 houses.
Tatebayashi City in Gunma prefecture, roughly 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Tokyo, experienced the gusts around 2:00 pm (0500 GMT), a local fire official said.
"Unstable atmospheric conditions are slowly moving from west to east," said a meteorologist, adding that further observations were needed to decide whether the whirlwind was a tornado.
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