Japan Quake Death Toll Reaches 11

Search teams recovered another body Wednesday from the wreckage of a hotel that was destroyed by a landslide following a major earthquake in northern Japan, bringing the quake's death toll to 11, police said.

Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda flew into the hardest-hit Kurihara city and observed the rescue effort at the hot springs hotel and visited evacuation centers to console the quake survivors, many of them with houses damaged or lost.

The National Police Agency said the body found Wednesday was the fifth pulled from the site, which was inundated by mud, rocks and fallen trees when the hill behind the two-story inn was sent crashing down by the force of the 7.2-magnitude quake on Saturday.

About a dozen people were missing and at least 225 injured, a police agency official said on condition of anonymity, because of departmental policy.

Two more people were believed to have been at the inn when the quake struck, but efforts to find them have been slowed by the volume of mud that has covered the site.

The quake also buckled roads and sent at least one bridge collapsing, making access to the most affected sites difficult. Aftershocks were also a major concern to the rescue teams, and officials warned further shaking could spark more landslides.

Fukuda vowed to speed up the rescue and reconstruction effort in the quake-hit town.

"We'll do our best to reconstruct the damages as quickly as possible so that you can go home soon," Fukuda told survivors who have taken refuge inside an elementary school gymnasium.

The toll from the quake wasn't higher because it hit the rural and sparsely populated mountains of Japan's Miyagi and Iwate prefectures (states).