Sri Lanka, July 30 -- Vast areas of Japan's Pacific coast were hit by tsunami waves as high as 60 centimeters on Wednesday after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the morning, with the weather agency keeping its evacuation warning in place.

The warning, covering areas stretching from Hokkaido in northern Japan to Wakayama Prefecture in the west, disrupted rail, road and air transportation along the coast and led the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to halt the release of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has warned of tsunami waves as high as 3 meters. The highest detected so far were the 60 cm-waves that arrived after ...