(Bloomberg) – Nine people are believed to have died at a nursing home in Japan's northern Iwate prefecture after Typhoon Lionrock triggered flooding in the area.

The nine were found without vital signs, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a briefing in Tokyo. The nursing home in the town of Iwaizumi, which housed elderly patients with dementia, was located directly beside a river that overflowed overnight, NHK said. The public broadcaster showed helicopter footage of the nursing home surrounded by debris washed up by the floods, which had already receded.

Typhoon Lionrock, the first typhoon to make landfall in the northern Tohoku region since records began, passed over the northernmost parts of Japan's main island of Honshu yesterday. Rivers burst their banks across Iwate and Hokkaido prefectures after the historic levels of rain brought by the storm.

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