Death toll in Japan quake-tsunami reaches 5178

PanARMENIAN.Net - The official toll of the dead and missing after the quake and tsunami flattened Japan's northeast coast has exceeded 13 000, police said, with the number of confirmed dead at 5 178.

Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food and hundreds of thousands more are homeless, stoically coping with heavy snowfalls, freezing cold and wet conditions in the northeast.

The governor of Fukushima prefecture, home to the crippled nuclear plant, said people were at breaking point, AFP reports.

Doubts over whether Japan can contain its nuclear crisis grew Thursday, March 17, as helicopters dumped water onto an overheating power plant and more foreign governments urged citizens to leave Tokyo. Four military Chinooks ran a mission to empty containers holding more than seven tons of water each onto the nuclear facility damaged by last week's massive earthquake and tsunami. The operation aims to keep the fuel rods inside reactors and containment pools submerged under water, to stop them from degrading when they are exposed to air and emitting dangerous radioactive material.

At the same time, Japanese engineers were focused on restoring the power supply to the stricken power plant in an attempt to reactivate its cooling system and avert a meltdown. The power supply to the Fukushima No. 1 plant on the Pacific coast, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, could partially resume later Thursday, the country's nuclear safety agency said.

"If the restoration work is completed, we will be able to activate various electric pumps and pour water into reactors and pools for spent nuclear fuel," a spokesman for Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.