Japan earthquake: Major 7.1 quake strikes as urgent tsunami warning issued

Japan has issued an urgent tsunami warning after being rocked by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the alarm had been sounded across the country’s southwestern islands of Kyushu and Shikoku – with open-source disaster warning agencies reporting the quake took place at around 4.43pm local time (8.43am in the UK).

The tsunami made landfall just before 9.30am UK time in Kyushu’s Miyazaki prefecture, with locals told to evacuate to higher ground as soon as possible.

The quake had been pencilled in as reaching 6.9 on the Richter scale – but Japan’s meteorological agency updated this to a 7.1 mere minutes later.

Further open-source reports suggested the earthquake struck just off the country’s west coast at some 30km beneath the Hyuga-nada Sea, in the Pacific Ocean.

Japan Railways said the quake had forced them to halt their bullet trains in Kyushu – the southern-most of Japan’s four main islands.

But further north, in Sendai – so badly hit in the country’s devastating 2011 earthquake – nuclear power plant operators confirmed that things were continuing as normal.

Despite the severity of the earthquake, authorities issued advisories for a tsunami just one metre high.

More to follow…