More than 600 bodies have been found along the coasts of north-eastern Japan's Miyagi and Iwate prefectures after a magnitude-8.9 earthquake and tsunami, the Kyodo News agency reported Sunday.
Officials said they expected the final death toll from Friday's disaster to exceed 2,000 although the official tally of the dead was at about 800 Sunday, dpa reported.
In the north-east, near the epicentre, officials had lost contact with tens of thousands of residents after the quake and tsunami that crushed buildings and swept away people, cars and crops.