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TOKYO (AP) — At least nine elderly people were killed when their nursing home was flooded in northern Japan, where Typhoon Lionrock dumped heavy rains, officials said Wednesday. The bodies of all nine residents were found at a nursing home in the town of Iwaizumi in Iwate prefecture, when police were checking another facility in the flooded neighborhood, said Takehiro Hayashijiri, an official at a prefectural disaster management division. Hayashijiri said the victims' identities and other details, including whereabouts of their caretakers, were not known. NHK TV said the nursing home was for the residents with dementia. Two more bodies were found in another town in Iwate, located on Honshu, Japan's main island, where Typhoon Lionrock slammed on Tuesday evening, hitting an area still recovering from the disastrous 2011 tsunami, NHK reported. Footage showed the nursing home partially buried in mud, surrounded by debris apparently washed down from the mountains. A car by the home was turned upside down. "We're making a government-wide effort to assess the extent of damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. The government sent troops to help in the rescue and cleanup. At least two rivers swollen by the typhoon broke through their banks before dawn on Wednesday on the northern island of Hokkaido, said NHK, quoting Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism. Authorities in the town of Minami-furano said many people were trapped inside houses and shelters by flooding from the Sorachi River. Aerial photos from Kyodo News service also showed serious flooding south of Hokkaido in Iwate prefecture. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said at least three people were injured in the three northern prefectures of Aomori, Akita and Miyagi since the typhoon made landfall near the city of Ofunato, 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of Tokyo. It was the first time a typhoon has hit shore in the northern region since 1951, when the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records. More than 170,000 people were told to evacuate, including 38,000 in Ofunato, according to the disaster management agency. More than 10,000 homes in the northern region were without electricity, with power lines damaged from the winds. The scene of large parts of northern Japan covered with muddy water was a shocking reminder of the tsunami disaster that struck the region five years ago. The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami left more than 18,000 people dead in the wide swaths of Japan's northern coast, including 340 in Ofunato. At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, decimated by the 2011 disaster, some outdoor decommissioning work was suspended as a precaution.

At least 9 dead as typhoon hits northern Japan