Eighteen hurt as typhoon pounds Japan*

TOKYO, Aug 3 (AFP) Aug 03, 2007

A powerful typhoon was churning along the Japanese coast Friday after
injuring 18 people and forcing thousands of people to flee their homes,
officials said.

Typhoon Usagi slammed into southern Japan late Thursday and veered to
hit western provinces, injuring a total of 18 people by early Friday,
police and municipal officials said.

"A gust made a 30-year-old man's postal delivery car tumble as he was
backing up," said Yasuo Ishitomo, a crisis-management official in the
western prefecture of Hiroshima.

"We also have reports that 58 houses were flooded by this morning. The
figure may increase as we are still checking the full extent of damage,"
he added.

Among the other injured people was a 49-year-old woman whose index
finger was chopped off as a gust slammed a door shut in the southern
prefecture of Miyazaki.

A 52-year-old carpenter broke his right wrist as he fell from the roof
of a house under construction while a 42-year-old man suffered head
wounds when he fell three metres (10 feet) from the roof of his house.

Municipal governments advised tens of thousands of people to evacuate
amid gusts and downpour. The storm triggered 19 landslides on the
southern island of Kyushu.

The typhoon weakened somewhat by early Friday and was moving north in
the Sea of Japan (East Sea) at 108 kilometres (67 miles) an hour.

Packing winds of up to 89 kilometres (51 miles) an hour, it was on
course to move over the northern main island of Hokkaido by early
Sunday. But it is forecast to dissipate into a moderate depression
around that time.

Usagi, which means rabbit in Japanese, hit Japan soon after the nation
was hit by a killer typhoon.

About two weeks ago, three people were killed in Typhoon Man-yi, one of
the most powerful typhoons to hit Japan in decades. A fourth person
remains unaccounted for.