# A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture earlier today, knocking out power to thousands of homes, rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall. The epicentre was about 20 kilometres south of central Kyushu island’s largest city, Kumamoto, with a population of around 700-thousand people. Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes. It accounts for about 20-percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or stronger.
Powerful quake hits southern Japan, deaths feared in shopping mall explosion