HONG KONG, July 10: The death toll from a week of typhoons in Asia and the Pacific reached 79 on Wednesday as Japan, Taiwan and the tiny island of Guam braced for another beating.

In Japan, a 13-year-old boy died and a middle-aged fisherman was missing amid heavy rains as Typhoon Chata’an neared its Pacific coast.

Chata’an claimed 40 lives last week when it devastated Chuuk atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia. It then killed another 30 people in the Philippines.

Filipino civil defence authorities said Wednesday another four people were missing and 41 were injured, with many areas north of Manila still flooded.

Chata’an had weakened Wednesday as it approached Japan but heavy rains and winds were still strong enough to wreak havoc on the nation’s main island of Honshu.

The first fatal victim of the bad weather in Japan was the 13-year-old student, whose body was found late Wednesday after he fell into a swollen river in Oita on the southern island of Kyushu.

Authorities were still searching for a Japanese fisherman who went missing after being stranded on an islet in a river in Gifu, some 250 kilometres west of Tokyo.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency said the eye of the typhoon was expected to reach its Pacific coast between Tokyo and Nagoya about midnight Wednesday.

The typhoon’s centre was 260 kilometres south of Japan’s central coast at 4:00 pm and it was moving at a speed of 35 kilometres per hour.

The force of Chata’an was diminishing but it was still packing winds of up to 108 kilometres per hour.

The typhoon has so far grounded at least 161 flights and delayed four international flights in Japan while forcing the cancellation of 71 bullet-train runs along the Pacific coast.—AFP