Up to 10,000 deaths feared in quake zone
The death toll in Japan’s north-eastern Miyagi prefecture alone is likely to exceed 10,000 in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, local police said today.
Miyagi is one of the areas worst affected by the disaster.
A spokesman for Miyagi police said that the area’s police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths in the prefecture is more than 10,000.
There are only 379 officially confirmed deaths in Miyagi out of a total of 801 as of Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said it has upgraded the magnitude of Friday’s catastrophic earthquake to 9.0.
The agency earlier measured it at 8.8. The quake was already the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world.
The agency warned of more strong aftershocks following the quake, which unleashed massive tsunamis in northern Japan and killed at least 763 people.
The US Geological Survey has measured the quake at magnitude 8.9, and that number remained unchanged today.
