By DPA,
Tokyo : Tens of thousands of people were feared dead Monday after last week’s earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan as Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 15,000 people had been rescued so far.
Alone in the town of Onagawa in Miyagi prefecture, one of the areas hardest-hit in Friday’s disaster, more than 1,000 bodies were found, the Jiji Press agency reported, citing local police.
Tens of thousands, however, remained unaccounted for after Friday’s disaster, media reports said, and the whereabouts of about 2,500 tourists visiting the disaster-stricken areas had not been confirmed, the Japan Tourism Agency said.
A new, powerful aftershock struck northeastern Japan and the greater Tokyo area Monday at 10.02 (0102 GMT), prompting warnings that a tsunami up to five metres high was heading toward the coast. The weather agency later dismissed the warning.
Shortly after the magnitude-6.2 tremor, an explosion occurred at a nuclear plant in Fukushima, 240 km north of Tokyo, where cooling systems at reactors have failed since Friday’s magnitude-9 quake and tsunami.
The public broadcaster NHK showed footage of a black cloud of smoke rising over reactor number 3 in Fukushima. Technicians had been working for days at a power plant there that is home to six reactors to reduce pressure and prevent a reactor meltdown.
Officials for the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power CO (TEPCO), said the inner containment hull of the reactor had not been damaged after what was believed to be a hydrogen explosion, but six people were injured.
Fukushima is home to 10 reactors at two power plants, and explosions have occurred at two of the reactors since Friday’s quake. The first happened Saturday.
A TEPCO spokesman said radiation was measured at the plant at 20 microsievert per hour 25 minutes after Monday’s blast. Japan allows an hourly exposure of 500 microsievert, which is a measure of the biological effects of radiation.
Meanwhile, rescue workers, police and local officials struggled Monday to recover growing numbers of bodies and confirm the fates of the missing as supplies were running short.
International aid, however, had begun arriving as rescue workers frantically combed flattened fishing villages and shattered cities to find those trapped or injured and recover bodies.
About 450,000 people had been evacuated by Sunday in the quake-hit region, but water, food and fuel were in short supply in many locations, prompting the government to airlift supplies by military helicopters, the Kyodo News agency reported.