At least 32 people have been killed in landslides that struck Japan’s Hiroshima prefecture, officials say.
The landslides happened in a residential area near a mountain in the Hiroshima city outskirts.
They were triggered after the equivalent of a month’s rain fell in the 24 hours up to Wednesday morning, Japan’s weather agency said.
Images from the scene showed houses buried in mud and rocks, as rescue teams worked their way towards homes.
Another nine people are still missing, said authorities.
Another local government official said some people were swept away and it was “hard to know exactly how many are unaccounted for”, AP reported.
The BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes says that several of those killed were children.
One of the youngest victims was a two-year-old boy, Kyodo news agency reported.
Among the dead was a 53-year old rescue worker who died when the hillside collapsed again, said authorities. He had pulled five people to safety during the operation.
