Self Defense Force soldiers and police officers search for missing people, one day after a landslide hit a residential area in Hiroshima, western Japan

AFP/Hiroshima

Thousands of rescuers combed through the wreckage of homes engulfed by landslides in western Japan on Thursday in the slim hope of finding survivors, a day after a wall of mud claimed at least 39 lives.
Police officers, firefighters and soldiers worked through the night in a desperate bid to find seven people still unaccounted for among the sludge and rubble.
Dozens of houses were buried when hillsides collapsed after torrential downpours in Hiroshima that saw more than a month's average rainfall descend in just three hours.
Throughout Wednesday there were moments of hope, with survivors who had sought refuge on the upper floors of their homes airlifted to safety, but there were also bodies carried away from the devastation wrapped in blankets or plastic sheeting.
It emerged Thursday that a 53-year-old rescuer who was killed in a secondary landslide the day earlier had died with a toddler in his arms.
Noriyoshi Masaoka, a firefighter with 35 years' experience, had battled through the slurry of the initial mountain collapse to rescue five people, before going back to help more.
The Tokyo Shimbun said a man and his three-year-old son were among a party of eight he was trying to rescue.
A witness told the paper the father had thrown his son into Masaoka's arms as he saw the second wave of mud and rocks beginning to cascade down the hillside.  
But in a terrible twist of fate, the father reportedly survived the landslip unscathed and watched helplessly as it swallowed both the child and his would-be rescuer.  
The bystander said the grief-stricken father remained where he was, just shouting his son's name.

Related Story