KURIHARA, Japan - A powerful earthquake rocked rural northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least four people, injuring more than 200 and sparking landslides that sliced mountains, destroyed roads and left residents cut off.

The 7.2 magnitude quake struck at 8:43 a.m. (12:43 a.m. British time Saturday) in Iwate, a sparsely populated, scenic area around 300 km north of Tokyo, where buildings also shook.

More than 160 aftershocks rocked the northern area and officials warned more strong quakes might be in store.

TV footage showed mountains sliced by the force of the quake, trees fallen into newly slashed ravines, roads ending abruptly at cliffs and bridges buckled and broken. Homes were shown strewn with scattered and smashed belongings.

But experts said the energy released by the quake was far smaller than the magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit southwestern China on May 12, leaving nearly 87,000 people dead or missing.

One of the people killed was caught in a landslide, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters. A second man was hit by a car after running out of a building and a third was killed by falling rocks at a dam construction site.

A fourth person died when a car was buried under a landslide, a local official said. Two others were rescued and taken to hospital, but another car was still buried, he added.

Five people trapped in a hot-spring resort inn hit by a landslide were rescued, but another seven were still missing and rescue workers were trying to pick their way through debris to reach them, media reported.

NHK public TV said 202 people were hurt and a total of 10 were missing as aftershocks jolted the region, hampering rescue efforts.

AFTERSHOCKS CONTINUING

"The aftershocks are continuing ... so a very careful response is required," Shinya Izumi, the cabinet minister in charge of disaster response, told a news conference.

"But we also need to rescue people as quickly as possible. It is a very tough situation."

Two of three people missing at a work site in Kurihara after a landslide had been found, and were in cardiac arrest, NHK said. Four campers including three non-Japanese, were unreachable, Kyodo news agency said.

More than 600 people were cut off in remote areas and military and other helicopters were heading their way, NHK said.

"I don't know if my family is safe," one middle-aged man covered in mud to the knees after hiking to a hot spring resort to check on relatives, told Reuters at an elementary school where the military had set up a landing pad.

Experts said casualties could rise as reports came in from isolated areas but the scope of the quake was far smaller than one that stuck China a month ago.

"The seismic energy of the China quake was one order of magnitude greater," Naoshi Hirata, a professor at Tokyo University's Earthquake Research Institute, told Reuters.

He added the region's sparse population and Japan's strict building standards had likely limited the impact.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater, prompting tough building codes to try to limit damage.

In October 2004, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 people and injuring more than 3,000. That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremor hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.

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