Elderly patients left to die in hospital six miles from Japan's stricken nuclear power plant




128 pensioners deserted by medical staff at a hospital inside exclusion zone



Japan holds minute's silence to mark one week since earthquake and tsunami



Official death toll hits 6,539 but expected to climb far higher



Hundreds of thousands made homeless seek refuge in emergency shelters



But there is no heating amid freezing temperatures and food and water are running low

The elderly are being abandoned to die in Japanese hospitals and care homes devastated by the tsunami amid a worsening humanitarian and nuclear disaster.



Hundreds of thousands of victims have been made homeless, with more than 400,000 struggling to survive in emergency shelters with no power and little food or water.



As the official death toll hit 6,539, it emerged that soldiers found 128 pensioners deserted by medical staff at a hospital in Iwaki, six miles from the Fukushima nuclear power station and inside the exclusion zone around the plant which continues to spew radiation into the atmosphere.



Most of the abandoned patients were in coma, and 14 died shortly after they were moved to an emergency centre in a nearby gym.

Refugees: Elderly victims of the tsunami wait covered in blankets in freezing temperatures at an emergency shelter in Kensumma. There is in heating to most of the 2,500 shelters across Japan and supplies of food, water and medicine are running low.

Despair: A woman weeps after returning to find her home flattened in Rikuzentakata, left, while an elderly woman waits in a school hall in Kensumma. She was among 53 care home residents saved after the tsunami

Minute's silence: Rescue workers offer a silent prayer to victims in Ofunato at 2.46pm Japan time, the minute the tsunami hit the coast of Japan a week ago today

Another eleven pensioners reportedly died in a retirement home in Kesenumma, six days after 47 other residents of the home were killed in the tsunami.



The death toll is expected to rise further with 10,354 victims missing - but local officials claim the real figure is several times that number after whole towns were flattened by the tsunami.

Japan has a high proportion of elderly citizens and many of them are now struggling to survive in shelters without heating or electricity as supplies of food and medicine run low.

Many of the rural, seaside towns hit by the tsunami were in economic decline and had seen an exodus of young people, who moved to major cities for work.

Fukushima official Chuei Inamura said the abandoned pensioners were found in Iwaki on Monday, as several explosions rocked the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant.



He said: ' We feel very helpless and very sorry for them,' Inamura said. 'The condition at the gymnasium was horrible. No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have means to provide good care.

Yukiya Amano, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, said engineers at the plant were today facing a race against time to stop at even worse catastrophe at the plant. Emergency crews were today spraying the over heating reactors from fire engines as radioactivity continued to leak from the plant.



All the surviving pensioners have now been moved out of the 12-mile exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant. Plans to transfer them to other hospitals were delayed by a shortage of vehicles and fuel and the fact that nearby hospitals were already full.

Mounting death toll: Casket at a mortuary in Rifucho as the official number of deaths hits 6, 539 but is expected to climb far higher

