The largest urban fire in Japan in nearly 50 years has killed one person and damaged 170 buildings in a residential area of the Japanese city of Oita.

Firefighters were still struggling to extinguish the blaze in the southern city as it spread to a forested mountain nearby, the local government said.

Military and firefighting helicopters were used to try and extinguish the country's largest urban blaze that had burned 48,900 square metres, roughly the size of seven soccer fields

Footage showed firefighters hosing ferocious flames as they ripped through houses on Tuesday night, while people were taken to a makeshift evacuation centre.

"The flames rose high, turning the sky red. The wind was strong. I never thought it would spread so much," one man in the city on the southern island of K

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