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TOKYO (AP) -- A 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Japan's southern main island of Kyushu on Tuesday, leaving dozens of people injured or missing after part of a shopping center and a huge chimney at a paper factory collapsed, officials said. A tsunami advisory was issued but quickly lifted.
There were fears that at least two people were dead.
In Kashima Town, the quake collapsed the second floor of the Aeon Mall shopping center, trapping an unknown number of people there, according to the fire department in the prefectural capital of Kumamoto. Japan's NHK national television said the collapse came after an explosion, believed to have been triggered by a gas leak at the building.
Four people were pulled out with injuries and taken to a hospital, while 10 others were unaccounted for, the Kumamoto prefectural emergency response team said. It said the extent of the damage was still being investigated as the search and rescue effort continued.
A 35-year-old male shopkeeper told Japan's Asahi newspaper that he fled the building after the quake alert, and heard an explosion sounding like a bomb blast about an hour later. When he turned around, he saw enormous white smoke billowing from the mall.
At the Nippon Paper Industries Co.'s Yatsushiro factory, where a chimney collapsed and the building was damaged, 11 people were trapped underneath the debris, the Kumamoto emergency team said. Two of them were later found without vital signs, while the conditions of nine others were unknown, the team said.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said more than 260,000 people were advised to evacuate, most of them in Kumamoto prefecture, but also in the neighboring Nagasaki prefecture.
The affected area is about 540 miles southwest of Tokyo, the country's capital.