Japan to up search for quake bodies

JAPAN will send nearly 25,000 soldiers backed by boats and aircraft into its disaster zone today on an intensive land-and-sea mission to recover the bodies of those killed by last month’s earthquake and tsunami, the military said.

Agriculture officials also plan to send a team of veterinarians into the evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear plant to check on hundreds of thousands of abandoned cows, pigs and chickens, many of which are believed to have died of starvation and neglect. The government is considering euthanising some of the dying animals, officials said.

About 14,300 people have been confirmed dead so far in the catastrophic March 11 tsunami and earthquake.