Powerful typhoon Man-yi strikes Japan's Okinawa

TOKYO, July 13 (Reuters) - A powerful typhoon hit the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa on Friday, pounding them with torrential rains and high winds, and was later expected to head north towards the nation's main islands.

Up to 500 mm (20 inches) of rain was expected to fall on some parts of Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu by Saturday morning, further battering areas already hit by heavy rains and flooding earlier this week.

Typhoon Man-yi was some 30 km (20 miles) south-southwest of the Okinawan city of Naha as of 9:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) and moving north at 20 km (12 miles) an hour, with winds at its centre of 180 km an hour and gusts of up to 252 km an hour, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.

"This storm is moving rather slowly, which means that rain will fall for quite some time, especially in places like Kyushu," an agency official said.

"In fact, rain is the biggest worry with this storm. Given the rain that's already fallen in Kyushu, the chance for damage is very high."

Television footage showed a car on its side in a Naha street and cars plowing through water on a flooded road. Some 24,000 households in Okinawa had lost power, NHK public television said.

More than 100 flights to and from Okinawa were cancelled.

The storm, classified as a category 4 typhoon by British-based Web site Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com), was expected to increase the activity of the annual rainy season front and pound much of Japan with heavy rain over an extended holiday weekend.

Kyushu, where one man died earlier this week when he was swept away by a flooded river, braced for more rain and flooding, and nearly 2,000 people were advised to evacuate.

The storm could make landfall on Kyushu, though the Meteorological Agency said the possibility was low.

It is currently predicted to come close to Kyushu on Saturday morning before turning eastward and weakening, brushing close to Tokyo on Monday.