Aftershocks rock Japan

Firefighters on the northern Japan island of Hokkaido battled to contain a blaze at an oil refinery sparked by last week’s earthquake, as powerful aftershocks continued to rumble through the region.

Under a plume of oily black smoke and huge pillars of flame, firefighters doused a storage tank with chemicals to try to extinguish the fire at the refinery in the Hokkaido town of Tomakomai.

No injuries were reported, but city officials said the smell of smoke was thick in the air, prompting nearly 200 complaints from concerned residents.

The storage tank, 80-feet high and 140 feet in diameter, was the second refinery tank to catch fire.

The magnitude 8 quake last Friday gutted another tank, consuming 188,700 barrels of crude oil.

Aftershocks measuring up to magnitude 5.4 are believed to have set off the second fire,

Meanwhile, the region continued to be rocked by aftershocks. One powerful magnitude 6.5 aftershock was centred off the coast of Kushiro, about 550 miles northwest of Tokyo but there were no casualties reported.