KURIHARA, Miyagi -- A 10th victim of the deadly earthquake that struck the Tohoku Region was found here Monday morning as rescuers continued their desperate search for survivors.

The body believed to belong to a man was found at the Komanoyu Onsen hot spring resort, where four people had remained missing as of Monday morning.

Police are trying to determine the identity of the person whose partial remains were found just before 10:30 a.m.

Rescuers continued their search Monday for survivors of the earthquake, their desperation heightened by the 72-hour survival limit deadline rapidly drawing on them.

Police, firefighters and Self-Defense Force troops working mainly in Kurihara toiled mostly with small machinery and by hand because landslides have prevented heavy earthmoving machinery from being brought into the area.

As of Monday morning, the toll from the Saturday morning quake reached 10 lives, with fatalities recorded in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures, while another 12 people remain unaccounted for.

Experts believe those buried in quakes have a 72-hour limit for survival and that deadline is rapidly approaching.

Rescuers resumed excavation work at 6 a.m. Monday at the Komanoyu Onsen hot spring in Kurihara's Koei district, where seven people had been trapped under debris that toppled over them after the earthquake. There are still four people missing, including operator Takao Sugawara, 58.

Efforts to open the route into Koei continued until late Sunday night. A landslide caused by the quake shut down the road in Koei, though one-way traffic has become possible up to a point about 5 kilometers away from the hot spring. As it is not possible to bring in earthmoving equipment to the area, rescuers are using hand-operated cutters to get through rubble and bucket relays to carry away mud from the site. The first floor of a ryokan inn at the site was completely buried by a landslide and aftershocks have caused cracks in the building.

Searchers continued looking for missing Mitsuru Igarashi, a 32-year-old construction worker from Kanayama, Fukushima Prefecture. Rescuers are looking for Igarashi in the same area where three laborers were buried in a landslide, two of who were killed.

Rescuers' efforts are being hampered by secondary problems from the quake, such as flooding and landslides.

Meanwhile, in Sendai police announced that a 37-year-old local man may also have been killed in the quake after being trapped under books in his apartment. But police said it is possible the man may have died of illness before the earthquake. They will continue to probe the circumstances surrounding his demise.

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