Toll from Japan quake rises to 16 as hopes fade for survivors

Japanese rescue workers with bulldozers and sniffer dogs scrabbled through the mud Thursday to find survivors from a landslide that buried houses after a powerful quake, as the death toll rose to 16.

Around 26 people are still unaccounted for in the small northern countryside town of Atsuma, where a cluster of dwellings were wrecked when a hillside collapsed with the force of the 6.6-magnitude quake, causing deep brown scars in the landscape.

"We've heard there are people still stuck under the mud, so we've been working around the clock but it's been difficult to rescue them," a Self-Defence Force serviceman in Atsuma told public broadcaster NHK.

"We will take measures to find them quickly," he added.

One village resident said: "It was horrendous. The land slid all the way down and I thought I would die. I thought my house would collapse."