Officials end a five-day rescue operation at Japan’s collapsed Aeon Mall following powerful quake

TOKYO (AP) — Authorities ended Saturday a massive dayslong search-and-rescue operation at a collapsed shopping mall in southwest Japan following a powerful earthquake that killed 34 people earlier this week.

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Kumamoto on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday. The Aeon Mall, in the town of Kashima, was one of the hardest-hit sites, after an explosion that followed the quake caused the walls and a floor to crumple.

The explosion, which the company said was believed to be due to a gas leak, occurred after about 3,000 shoppers had been evacuated to a parking lot following the quake, but some employees remained inside. The mall’s second floor collapsed.

Rescuers extracted five people from under mall debris and retrieved the bodies of seven others over the past five days. On Saturday, officials said all missing were accounted for and ended the operation at the Aeon Mall.

The overall number of missing in the hit prefecture remains unknown, and search operations pressed on, with thousands of Self Defense troops, police, rescue workers and sniffing dogs deployed.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, at a government task force meeting Saturday, urged rescue personnel not to leave anyone behind.

At another hard-hit site of Nippon Paper Industries factory in the Yatsushiro city, a chimney collapsed during the quake, trapping 11 employees, of whom two were rescued and nine confirmed dead, officials said.

The earthquake has left 103 people injured in Kumamoto, authorities said, and two of the reported deaths are being investigated to determine if they are quake-related.

The prefecture’s main challenge is the lack of fresh water affecting nearly 70,000 homes, and fuel shortages as Japan suffers sweltering heat, stoking fears of heat-related illness. Japan Meteorological Agency said temperatures reached an “extreme heat” level of 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Kumamoto city Saturday.

More than 9,000 people remain at crowded shelters, such as converted community centers, school gyms and classrooms. Many others slept in cars parked at town hall parking lots and parks, or outside of their homes, for privacy.

Experts have long criticized Japan’s crowded shelters and their lack of sanitation and privacy as causing additional stress and increasing the risk of health problems for disaster-hit people.

Water, food and other necessities, including portable toilets, as well as air conditioners and partitions, were being delivered to improve conditions at the crowded shelters, Takaichi said Saturday.

“The government is determined to do everything we can,” Takaichi said.

The prefecture said it has received more than 1,500 reports of power loss as of Saturday, but local power company serving Kyushu said it had no immediate reports of outages.

Over 180 homes were destroyed, officials said, and nearly 3,500 buildings were damaged — nearly double the number reported on Friday — with 20 of them severely affected, according to Kumamoto prefectural assessments.