Death toll in Japan’s Miyagi may exceed 10,000

Members of a family walk through a devastated urban area in Minami Sanriku, Miyagi, northern Japan Sunday.

Police in Japan’s north-eastern Miyagi prefecture said they had estimated the death toll in Miyagi to exceed 10,000. Miyagi is one of the areas worst affected by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that hit Friday.

Miyagi police spokesman Go Sugawara said on Sunday that the prefecture’s police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths in the prefecture was more than 10,000.

There were only 379 officially confirmed deaths in Miyagi out of a total of 801 as of Sunday afternoon.