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Tokyo - A huge landslide that engulfed homes in western Japan killed at least 27 people and left another 10 missing, the government said on Wednesday.
Dozens of houses were buried when a wall of mud thundered down a hillside in Hiroshima overnight, television pictures showed, leaving rescuers to pick through the devastation for any signs of life.
"According to the National Police Agency, the death toll has risen to 27 and 10 others are still unaccounted for," said an official of the disaster management office, a government body.
The number of dead had risen rapidly from an initial toll of four, although emergency services said it was too early to tell exactly how many people had lost their lives.
There are "several spots where people are supposed to be buried alive, and we still don't know how many people are missing", an emergency services spokesperson told AFP.
Among the dead was a 53-year-old rescuer, who was killed by a secondary landslide after he had pulled five people to safety, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
Aerial footage showed several houses buried by sludge, their wooden frames splintered by the weight of the mud.
Torrents of brown water raced off mountains behind the homes and through the wrecked buildings, hampering rescuers' efforts as they searched for anyone still trapped.
Emergency workers were seen climbing up to the second floor and roofs of half-collapsed houses - some of which were floating - in a bid to reach any survivors.
Pictures showed there had been at least five different landslides, some having uprooted trees and carried rocks down the hillside.
One man, gesturing to the mud-covered remains of a house, told NHK: "My house is over there, flattened".
Pointing elsewhere, he said: "A leg was seen [sticking out of the mud] and they are trying to confirm if the person is alive. The first thing we have to do is to help that person".
Another man told reporters he had seen everything he owned swept away.
"We could hear the earth rumbling and all of a sudden, things roared past us," he said.
A woman told of how she had escaped death because of where she had been at the time the disaster struck.
"I was able to survive as I stayed in the middle of the house. Both sides were destroyed."
Troops deployed
Japanese troops were deployed in response to a request from the local government.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said there would be a sizeable response.
"I have ordered [government officials] to carry out the rescue operation in an integrated manner, aware of the possibility of further rain," he told reporters in Tokyo.
"I also ordered them to raise the number of Self-Defence Force [military] personnel to several hundred in order to strengthen rescue operations," he said, adding he would be sending one of his ministers to the site.
Japan's weather agency warned more heavy rain is on the way to the area, raising the risk of further landslides in places where tons of mud have already been displaced.
The archipelago has been battered in recent weeks by unusually heavy rain that has sparked a number of smaller landslides and several floods, some of which have claimed lives.
Despite widespread concreting to shore up hillsides, mountainous and densely populated Japan is prone to this kind of disaster.
In October last year, dozens of people were killed when the torrential rains of a passing typhoon triggered large landslides on the island of Oshima, south of Tokyo.
Hiroshima is no stranger to tragedy like this.
In 1999, more than 320 landslides hit the city, including the area affected on Wednesday, killing more than 30 people.
Around 32 000 areas in the local area are designated as at risk from landslides.
Experts said many of the hills are composed of fragmented granite, which can become unstable when waterlogged.
