4,000 bodies remain unidentified

TOKYO, March 29 (UPI) -- Japanese police issued a grim statistic Tuesday -- about 4,000 bodies remained unidentified in the northeast savaged by the March 11 quake-tsunami catastrophe.

Even as the total confirmed toll of the dead and missing from the disaster in the entire region soared further, police in three of the worst-hit prefectures -- Iwate, Miyagi and Fukishima -- said the 4,000 bodies were recovered from areas away from residential areas in those prefectures, Kyodo News reported.

"They were collected at places far from their residential areas (due to being swept away by the tsunami), or their families as a whole must have been washed away by the tsunami,'' a senior official at the National Police Agency said.

Police were awaiting firm identification of the bodies after posting information on their belongings, clothing and physical characteristics on Web sites.

The latest confirmed death toll as of 10 a.m. Tuesday was put at 11,063, and 17,258 were reported missing.