TOKYO, April 7 (Kyodo) -- Special police squads designed to carry out rescue operations during major disasters and accidents began work Thursday in 12 prefectures across the country.
The squads set up by the National Police Agency were modeled on the ''hyper-rescue team'' of the Tokyo Fire Department, which drew public attention after a live television broadcast of its rescue of a 2-year-old boy from a car buried in a landslide following the big earthquake that hit Niigata Prefecture last October, agency officials said.
A total of 18 rescue squads were launched in police departments in Tokyo, Hokkaido, Miyagi, Saitama, Kanagawa, Shizuoka, Aichi, Osaka, Hyogo, Hiroshima, Kagawa and Fukuoka, the officials said.
Each squad, consisting of 11 members chosen from riot task forces, belongs to a broad-based emergency rescue team set up at each police headquarters after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.
''I want you to do your best to live up to people's expectations as a professional rescue team,'' Michitoshi Ishida, head of the security bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo, told squad members at an inauguration ceremony.
Later Thursday, the members conducted a rescue drill in which a person trapped under a collapsed house was rescued.
A search and rescue dog which was given an award by the Metropolitan Police Department for helping rescue the boy at the Niigata landslide site also took part in the training.
