BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Japan has resumed rescue efforts following the country's deadliest earthquake in nine years. Saturday's quake and its aftershocks left 24 people dead and over 2,000 injured.

    As officials prepared to resume rescue efforts on Monday, a powerful quake with a magnitude of 5.6 on the Richter scale that was also felt in Tokyo struck rural Niigata prefecture, about 250 kilometers north of the capital.

    More than 80,000 people in northern Japan spent a second night in shelters or in the open air as aftershocks from Saturday's deadly earthquake continued to rattle the area.

    A local resident said: "There are things all over the floor of my house and I am worried about that, but I am also worried about how long the earthquakes and this situation will last."

    Saturday's quake came just days after a typhoon killed at least 80 people in the area. It was the deadliest in Japan since the Kobe earthquake killed more than 6,400 people in 1995. Medical workers are struggling to cope with the injured.

    A local doctor said: "We are booked over capacity and we now admit people by the degree of injury."

    More than 2,000 houses were damaged in the quake. Local authorities were struggling to restore power supply to the area, where 62,000 households are still lacking power. Thousands of homes were also without water. There were no reports of significant damage to industry in the region. But there were reports that some factories had halted production, and damage to roads and railways raised concerns about distribution bottlenecks.

    Japan is one of the world's most seismically active areas, accounting for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude six or greater. Enditem

(CCTV.com)