Aftershocks bring misery; toll hits 47

Aftershocks rattled survivors of deadly Japanese earthquakes, nearly a week after the first one struck, as the area braced for heavy rain later yesterday and the possibility of more landslides.

Rescuers using backhoes and shovels to dig through crumbled houses swept away in a landslide found a lifeless woman, one of several people still missing, taking the toll of dead to 47.

Hundreds of people in the Kumamoto area of southwestern Japan spent another night in their cars, afraid to return to damaged houses.

The first quake hit late on April 14 and the largest, at magnitude 7.3, some 27 hours later.

"I keep thinking the earthquakes will stop, but they just go on and on," one woman at an evacuation centre in Mashiki, one of the worst-hit areas, told NHK.

"It's really scary."

A 5.5-magnitude quake hit on Tuesday night. Of more than 680 aftershocks hitting Kyushu island since April 14, more than 89 have registered at magnitude 4 or more on Japan's intensity scale, strong enough to shake buildings.

Nearly 100,000 people are in evacuation centres.