TOKYO: The death toll in the worst typhoon to hit Japan for decades reached 67 on Tuesday as rescuers slogged through mud and debris in an increasingly grim search for the missing.

Thousands of homes remained without power or water.

National broadcaster NHK said 67 people were known to have died, after Typhoon Hagibis swept across central and eastern Japan. Some 15 people remain missing, while more than 200 were injured in the storm, whose name means “speed” in the Tagalog language.

About 138,000 households were without water while 24,000 had no electricity, well down on the hundreds of thousands who were initially left without power but a cause for concern in northern areas where temperatures are forecast to fall.

The highest toll (18) was in Fukushima prefecture north of Tokyo, a largely agricultural area where the Abukuma River burst its banks in at least 14 places.