The death toll¹ from Japan's 11 March earthquake and tsunami² has topped 10,000, police say.

日本警方称，3·11地震和海啸造成的死亡人数已上升至10000人。

More than 17,440 people are listed as missing, and 2,775 as injured.

Many hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless, short of food, water and shelter after the magnitude 9.0 quake shattered communities.

At the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant work is continuing to find the source of escaping vapour（蒸汽） which has caused fears about food and water purity.

Engineers are hoping to re-start generators³ to run vital cooling equipment for nuclear rods in the six-reactor plant at Fukushima.

Two workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were taken to hospital after being exposed to high levels of radiation.

The government has ordered new safety measures at the plant after it emerged the workers had not been wearing the correct protective boots and had ignored a radiation alarm.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the nuclear plant, has said a cold shutdown may still take a month.

"We are still in the process of assessing the damage at the plant, so that we can't put a deadline on when the cooling operations will work again," a TEPCO spokesman told AFP.

The plant is 250km (155 miles) north-east of the capital, Tokyo. The government has declared a 20km exclusion⁴（排除，驱逐） zone and evacuated⁵ tens of thousands of people.

Those living up to 30km away have been told to stay indoors to minimise exposure.

Radiation levels in Tokyo's water supply have now fallen, but remain high in other areas of northern Japan.

Chinese customs officials have reportedly treated two Japanese travellers who flew into China from Tokyo after they detected radiation levels "seriously exceeding limits". Meanhwile, the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported abnormal radiation was detected on a ship coming from Japan to Xiamen port in Fujian province.