Downpours and strong winds brought by Typhoon Shanshan led to four death in Japan from Saturday, Kyodo News reported.

The typhoon is expected to hit Japan's southwestern island of Kyushu on Sunday evening.

In the southern city of Hiroshima, a volunteer firefighter who was out on patrol Saturday night, was found dead in a rive on Sunday morning. A local newspaper reporter who went to a disaster site Saturday night is still missing, according to the police.

In southwestern Saga prefecture, a father and a daughter were killed when their car was hit by a flash flood on Saturday. Besides, a man was found dead on a submerged road in the prefecture on Saturday noon.

Japan Meteorological Agency warned that the typhoon, packing winds of up to 144 kilometers per hour near its center, could make landfall and cause floods in southwestern Japan.

For about a 24-hour period through 6 p.m. Monday, a 350- millimeter rainfall is expected on the Pacific Ocean side of the southern Shikoku region and a 200 mm rainfall on the region's Setouchi area plus the Kinki, Tokai and Chugoku regions, the agency said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2006)