'Lionrock' pounds area in Japan hit by 2011 earthquake and tsunami

Waves crash against the coast in Ishinomaki,
 Miyagi prefecture, northeastern Japan on Tuesday.

Tokyo: At least 10 people have died in northern Japan after a powerful typhoon pounded the region.

Typhoon Lionrock made landfall in Japan's Tohoku, the area devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, on Tuesday evening becoming the first typhoon to come onshore in the region since records began in 1951.

On Wednesday, citing police, local broadcaster NHK reported nine people were found dead at an elderly care home in Iwate prefecture, while a woman was killed in Kuji City.

The storm came onshore near Ofunato in Iwate prefecture, a city where 340 people were killed and almost 3000 homes destroyed in the 2011 disasters. The cyclone took a boomerang-like route away from Japan before turning back over the past week and is expected to move faster over the northern part of the Japanese archipelago and into the Sea of Japan by Wednesday, where it will weaken into an extratropical cyclone.

Read Shin Shoji’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Typhoon Lionrock pounds Japan's northeast causing death.”