ငလ်င္ ႏွင့္ ဆူနာမီေရေဘးဒဏ္ေၾကာင့္ေသဆံုးသြားသူဦးေရ ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ ႏိုင္

Quake death toll 'to exceed 10,000'

(UKPA) – 24 minutes ago

The death toll in Japan's earthquake and tsunami is likely to exceed 10,000 in one state alone, an official has said, as millions of survivors were left without drinking water, electricity and proper food along the pulverized north-eastern coast.

"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters, adding that Japan's future would be decided by the response to this crisis.

Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000, it seemed overwhelmed by what's turning out to be a triple disaster: Friday's quake and tsunami damaged two nuclear reactors at a power plant on the coast, and at least one of them appeared to be going through a partial meltdown, raising fears of a radiation leak.

The police chief of Miyagi prefecture told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000. Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in Friday's disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed dead in Miyagi.

The nuclear crisis posed fresh concerns for those who survived the earthquake and tsunami, which hit with breathtaking force and speed, breaking or sweeping away everything in its path.

According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed - including 200 people whose bodies were found Sunday along the coast - and more than 1,000 were missing in the disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.

In a rare piece of good news, the Defence Ministry said a military vessel rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after being swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition.

The US Geological Survey calculated the initial quake to have a magnitude of 8.9, while Japanese officials raised their estimate on Sunday to 9.0. Either way it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan. It has been followed by more than 150 powerful aftershocks.

Large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed and people were running out of gasoline for their vehicles.

The government said 275,000 people have been evacuated to emergency shelters, many of them without power.Rest of your post