Japan dead, missing near 21,000

A week after the disasters devastated the northeast coast, the National Police Agency said Sunday that 7,700 people died and 11,651 were missing. -- PHOTO: AP

KAMAISHI - WORKERS were close to restoring power to a nuclear plant's overheating reactors on Sunday as the toll of dead or missing from Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly a century neared 21,000.

There were fears of a far higher death toll from the disaster that wiped out vast areas along the Pacific coast of northern Honshu island.

The Fukushima nuclear plant was struck on March 11 by a massive earthquake and tsunami which, with 8,199 people confirmed killed, is Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the Great Kanto quake levelled much of Tokyo in 1923. Another 12,722 are missing, feared swept out to sea by the 10-metre tsunami or buried in the wreckage of buildings.

Miyagi prefecture was worst hit, with a confirmed death toll of 4,882. But the Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi told a Sunday task force meeting that the prefecture alone 'will need to secure facilities to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people,' Jiji Press reported.

The second-worst hit prefectures were Iwate with 2,525 confirmed deaths, then Fukushima with 670 lives lost.

The death toll has now well surpassed that of the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck the western Japanese port city of Kobe in 1995, killing 6,434 people. -- AFP