More travel chaos in Japan as snow storm kills three

TOKYO, Feb 15 (AFP): Japan's road, rail and air travel services faced further disruptions Saturday, reports and officials said, after a fresh snow storm killed three people and injured 850 others following last week's deadly blizzard.

Snow began falling Friday morning in the capital Tokyo and piled up to 26 centimetres (10 inches) by early Saturday, a week after the heaviest snowfall in decades left at least 11 people dead and more than 1,200 injured across the nation.

A driver was killed Friday in a crash involving his car and a truck on an icy road in Shiga, central Japan, while a farmer died after a tractor overturned on a snow-covered road in southwestern Oita, local media said.

In a separate snow-related accident, a driver was killed and three others injured on an expressway in central Shizuoka, the news reports said.

Public broadcaster NHK said some 850 people, including one in a coma, have been injured in snow-related accidents across the nation since snow hit western Japan late Thursday.

Drivers were struggling to move their cars in the capital's residential district of Setagaya, while snow started melting and flooding some roads in downtown Tokyo.