TOKYO, July 22, 2009 (AFP) - Hundreds of troops joined the search in western Japan Wednesday for 10 people missing a day after torrential rains triggered floods and landslides that killed at least six people, officials said.

Emergency services staff were digging through mud and the debris of broken furniture inside a mud-filled nursing home in Hofu, Yamaguchi prefecture, 750 kilometres (470 miles) west of Tokyo, television images showed.

"We started the search for the people still missing at 7:00 am (2200 GMT) with at least 280 rescue officers," a prefectural police spokesman told AFP.

The Ground Self Defence Force dispatched 220 troops to the rescue effort, which was hampered by muddy water still flowing down a hillside and into the nursing home where three people died and four people were listed as missing.

Two more people were killed elsewhere in Yamaguchi, one in a landslide and another in a swollen river, while six remained missing, police officials said.

In the neighbouring prefecture of Tottori, one person drowned in a flooded river, another police spokesman said.

Some 370 people were evacuated to emergency shelters while the water supply was cut to some 30,000 households in Yamaguchi, public broadcaster NHK said, adding that more than 1,270 houses had been flooded.

Prime Minister Taro Aso had ordered thorough measures to tackle the disaster, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference in Tokyo.

"First, we have to do our best to rescue people as there are a number of people still missing," the top government spokesman said.

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