Tokyo: Japan has launched a mammoth relief mission in north-east areas, a day after a devastating earthquake and tsunami claimed hundreds of lives.
Whole villages have been washed away and at least one town has been largely destroyed. Police said 215,000 people have fled their homes.
The tsunami was triggered by Japan’s biggest earthquake since records began.
Meanwhile, nuclear officials said they were checking whether a damaged reactor had gone into meltdown.
The government had earlier declared a state of emergency at five nuclear reactors as cooling systems failed.
Analysts say a meltdown would not necessarily lead to a major disaster because light-water reactors would not explode even if they overheated.
The 8.9-magnitude tremor struck in the afternoon local time on Friday off the coast of Honshu island at a depth of about 24km, 400km north-east of Tokyo.
It was nearly 8,000 times stronger than last month’s quake in New Zealand that devastated the city of Christchurch, scientists said.
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