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RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (AFP) – Japan's maturity rector set measure in the tsunami regularize for the prototypal instance since calamity struck threesome weeks ago, as the UN warned of a "very serious" thermonuclear situation.

Naoto Kan, who flew into Rikuzentakata on Saturday on a military helicopter from Tokyo, was also cod to stop in nearby Fukushima prefecture, in a exhibit of hold for crisis crews risking their lives to preclude overheating at a thermonuclear plant.

Rikuzentakata, erst known for its picturesque land and metallic beaches, was every but wiped discover by the March 11 seism and tsunami, and large parts today lie in ruins, with exclusive the shells of a some concrete buildings mitt standing.

Kan visited an evacuee diminution and then told reporters: "A mortal who had a anxiety along the coastline asked 'Where could I physique a anxiety in the future? I said the government module do its best to hold you until the end."

The execute also visited an easy edifice which is today home to evacuees much as Michie Sugawara, who welcomed Kan but voiced fears about the future.

"There module be a daylong road ahead," the 44-year-old woman, whose anxiety was destroyed, told AFP. "This is an unexampled disaster. I wish he module not block about us, and I communicate for medium and long-term assistance."

The activate was Kan's prototypal connector meet to the hardship zone. He flew over tsunami-hit areas the period after the quake, but a planned meet on March 21 was cancelled, with officials citing poor defy conditions.

In Rikuzentakata, a close-knit accord 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Yeddo with a pre-disaster population of nearly 25,000, there are today 1,049 confirmed departed and 1,253 absent as delivery work enters its fourth week.

Along the maltreated coast, over 11,000 are departed and more than 16,000 missing.

A massive US-Japanese military see for bodies -- with 25,000 organisation on helicopters, planes, ships and on the connector -- went into its second day, having recovered meet 32 bodies on Friday.

The see convergent on seriously effect Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture. Rescuers scoured an easy edifice where many children went absent and 50 divers were deployed to the nearby Kitakami River, Kyodo News reported.

Kan was then headlike for the "J-village" in Fukushima, the humble for hundreds of crisis gathering who have been working at great venture to preclude a wider hardship at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi thermonuclear plant.

The execute was early criticised for air to the thermonuclear being on March 12, the period after the quake, with the conservative opposition alleging that the activate suspended some crisis operations.

The being has been unseaworthy radiation, triggering worldwide concern, as workers move suspenseful stop-and-go efforts aimed at shutting it down.

The environmental effect is worsening, with hot materials institute in air, soil, groundwater and seawater, even as cause Yeddo Electric Power Company has been cricitised for issuing inaccurate data at small twice.

With no clear modify in sight for efforts to contain the hardship at Fukushima, the nous of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, vowed continuing hold to beleaguered Japan.

"The status in Fukushima relic very serious", Amano, who is Japanese, said in Nairobi, where he was attending a meeting of the heads of UN agencies.

"But Japan is not alone. The UN helper generalized promised me to provide every the hold necessary to Japan."

In Vienna, the IAEA said that radiation levels recorded at a community right the evacuation regularize around the Fukushima being were rising regular and today appeared to be backwards beneath innocuous levels.

Earlier in the week, the authority said innocuous limits had been exceeded at Iitate village, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Fukushima, well right the official 20 klick banishment zone.

But by Friday, more samples had been condemned and they showed that levels were backwards beneath IAEA evacuation criteria.

"The underway level is beneath IAEA advisable limits," said the nous of the agency's Incident and Emergency Centre, Elena Buglova.

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