Japan is marking the fifth anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left more than 18,000 people dead or missing.

Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito have attended a memorial in Tokyo, and joined a moment of silence nationwide at the exact moment the quake hit.

Mr Abe and Akihito will also offer flowers at a memorial ceremony in Tokyo.

The earthquake on March 11, 2011, was one of the most powerful ever recorded.

But it was the resulting tsunami that claimed the most lives, as a wall of seawater powered through coastal areas of Tohoku, flattening the entire towns and villages.

At 14:46 Tokyo time (05:56 GMT), the exact moment the quake was detected, people across Japan bowed their heads as a mark of respect for the victims.

Bells rang, in the capital, the underground metro came to halt.

The magnitude-9.0 quake struck offshore, created a vast water surge that devastated Japan’s north-east.

It also triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, after the tsunami knocked out power to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, taking cooling systems offline, which set off a series of meltdowns.

The subsequent disaster spewed radiation over a wide area and forced the evacuation of more than 160,000 local people. Most of them have not been able to return to their homes, despite extensive decontamination work.