Video showed people fleeing a cloud of smoke and walking through the parking lot outside the Aeon shopping mall in Kashima, Kumamoto prefecture, after an earthquake partially collapsed the building on Tuesday.
The location and date when the video was filmed was verified by the original file metadata. The building, parking lot layout and businesses logos matched archive and satellite imagery.
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan's southern Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday, killing at least two people after an explosion tore through a shopping mall and another in a building collapse, while knocking out power to thousands of homes and rupturing roads across the region.
The prefectural government said early on Wednesday that rescuers working at the scene overnight had taken eight people out of the Aeon Mall Kumamoto shopping center, where the blast occurred following the quake.
Of those eight, two women in their 20s were confirmed dead, while one other person was reported to be in cardiopulmonary arrest. The five others were injured, but officials said their condition was not life-threatening.
Emergency fire rescue teams, police and Self-Defense Force personnel were working together at the scene overnight, concentrating search operations on areas of the building where calls for help had been received.
