Powerful typhoon lashes southern Japan

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan was on high alert Saturday as a powerful typhoon lashed the southern main island of Kyushu, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

Typhoon Man-yi, packing winds of up to 216 kilometres (135 miles) an hour, made landfall on the Osumi peninsula of southern Kyushu and was expected to move along the Pacific coast of the archipelago towards the Tokyo region.

The typhoon was near the city of Ibusuki on the southern tip of Kyushu at 1:30 am (0430 GMT), moving northeast at 30 kilometres an hour, Japan's weather agency said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency forecast Man-yi would arrive in the Tokyo region on Sunday, warning of torrential rain, flooding and landslides.

At least 37 people were injured in the Kyushu region and the southern island of Okinawa since the typhoon approached Thursday, local authorities said.

In Kagoshima, southern Kyushu, alone, 5,374 people were forced to evacuate their homes, while 2,110 people fled from flooding and possible landslides in neighboring Miyazaki prefecture.

Television footage showed exhausted residents in Miyazaki who sheltered overnight at a community hall after evacuating their houses.

"I couldn't sleep at all here," one woman told public broadcaster NHK. "I am so worried about my home. You never know what is going to happen to the house as the typhoon is coming."

The storm forced All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines to cancel 424 flights, affecting some 46,000 passengers, Jiji Press news agency said.

Man-yi was named after a strait that is now a reservoir in Hong Kong.
Japan and other nations in the western Pacific are hit each year by lethal typhoons. Last year, Typhoon Shanshan killed nine people in Japan and injured 300 others.