By IRNA,
London : Britain Thursday joined France, Italy and Australia in urging their nationals to leave Tokyo amid fears that a radioactive cloud could spread from the stricken nuclear reactors on Japan’s earthquake and tsunami-hit north-east coast.
The Foreign Office announced that it was also chartering flights from Tokyo to Hong Kong to supplement commercially available options for those wishing to leave Japan.
The British embassy in Tokyo earlier said it was doing everything it could to evacuate British citizens from the zone most seriously hit by the earthquake and tsunami.
‘We are in the process of doing everything we can to identify potential casualties and to help people who are in the disaster zone, but have survived and want to get out,’ Foreign office minister Jeremy Browne said.
‘The situation there is pretty chaotic in terms of transport and communications, but we are keen to identify people and keen to help people.” Browne said.
Radiation levels in the Japanese capital were reported to have reached levels 10 times above normal at one point on Wednesday, as the world’s attention focused on the unfolding nuclear crisis following last week’s earthquake and tsunami.
Alarm was further raised Thursday of an impending nuclear catastrophe as Japan resorted to use army helicopters to dump tonnes of sea water on Fukushima Daiichi plant to try to prevent a meltdown of reactors and fuel rods.