TOKYO, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Local residents on Saturday commemorated the deadly earthquakes two years ago that claimed hundreds of lives in Kumamoto and Oita prefectures in southwestern Japan.
A commemorative ceremony was held at the Kumamoto prefectural government office Saturday morning, with more than 300 people participating, including family members of those killed in the quakes.
Ikuo Kabashima, governor of Kumamoto prefecture, said that reconstruction work in the quake-hit areas has been making steady progress.
The participants also called for lessons to be learned from the deadly quakes and to be passed on to future generations.
A 6.5-magnitude quake struck Kumamoto prefecture and the neighboring regions on April 14, 2016, followed by a 7.3 magnitude quake two days later, killing a total of 267 people.
Governments statistics showed that as many as 200,000 houses were damaged or destroyed in the quakes, which forced more than 190,000 people to evacuate at one time.
Two years from the disaster, some 38,000 people are still displaced, and the construction of some 1,735 public housing units for people affected by the disaster in Kumamoto prefecture are not to be completed until March 2020.
Meanwhile, experts here warned that strong quakes could still hit the region as small quakes frequented the fault zones that caused the deadly double temblors two years ago.