About 200,000 homes in Japan without power due to typhoon

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A powerful typhoon pummeled Japan's southern island of Okinawa Saturday, causing nearly 200,000 homes without electricity and injuring at least 17, as weather officials warned the storm would rip through the Japanese archipelago over the weekend.

Typhoon Trami, packing maximum gusts of 216 kilometers (134 miles) per hour near its center, was forecast to hit the mainland early Sunday and cause extreme weather across the country into Monday.

Television footage showed branches ripped from trees by strong winds blocking a main street in the regional capital Naha, as well as torrential horizontal rain and massive waves splashing over breakwaters on a remote island in the area.

A tree is uprooted due to the heavy typhoon in Okinawa, September 29, 2018. /VCG Photo

Local policemen in rain jackets wielding chainsaws were battling the furious wind to remove fallen trees.

The gusts were strong enough to overturn a truck and smash the glass windows of a bank.

Some 700 people were evacuated to shelters in Okinawa and at least 386 flights were cancelled, mainly in western Japan, according to Japan's public broadcaster NHK.

West Japan Railway said it would suspend all services in the Osaka region and cancel some Shinkansen bullet trains by noon on Sunday.

Waves hit the seawalls at a coast of Shibushi city, Kagoshima prefecture on Kyushu island as typhoon Trami approaches, September 29, 2018. /VCG Photo

Seventeen people suffered minor injuries in storm-related accidents in Okinawa and several houses suffered some damage, but no one was feared dead, local officials said.

"The number may rise further as we are in the middle of sorting out figures," said Masatsune Miyazato, an official at the island's disaster-management office.

There have already been heavy downpours in large areas of western and eastern Japan, including the capital, as the storm spurred a seasonal rain front.

Source(s): AFP