Japan's Emperor Akihito said Wednesday he was praying for the people's safety following last week's deadly earthquake and tsunami, and expressed his deep concern about the escalating nuclear crisis.

In a rare television address to the nation, the 77-year-old monarch -- who is held in deep respect by many Japanese -- admitted the country still did not know how many people had died in the March 11 twin disasters.

The mayor of a town near Japan's quake-damaged and stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Wednesday that it desperately needs help for thousands of evacuees sheltered there.

"We have received many people who were evacuated from the area near the plant," Masao Hara, mayor of Koriyama city, about 50 kilometers west of the nuclear plant, told Agence France Presse by telephone.

A U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's lawless northwest tribal belt on Wednesday killed at least five militants, security officials said, as the covert campaign steps up in the border region.

The strike took place in Datta Khel town, 25 kilometers west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal district, which borders Afghanistan and is a stronghold of al-Qaida-linked Taliban militants.

A bomb exploded at the office of a moderate Islamic group in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Tuesday, injuring four people including a policeman, police and a witness said.

The device was in a package sent to the office of the Liberal Islam Network, a grouping of religious intellectuals, in East Jakarta, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told reporters.

A suicide attack on an army recruitment center in northern Afghanistan has left 36 people dead and another 42 wounded, a local official said Monday.

"There was a suicide attack at the army recruitment center in Kunduz city," said Mehboubullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the governor of Kunduz province.

The Indian navy has captured 61 suspected Somali pirates and rescued 13 fishermen after a firefight with a pirate mother ship in the Arabian Sea, a navy spokesman said Monday.

"A total of 74 men have been apprehended of which 61 are suspected to be Somali pirates," Indian navy spokesman P.V.S Satish said, adding the incident happened on Saturday night within Indian waters.

The primary containment vessel at the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was not damaged in an explosion there Monday, the U.N. atomic watchdog IAEA said.

"Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has provided the IAEA with further information about the hydrogen explosion that occurred today at the Unit 3 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

At least three militants died Monday in a U.S. strike on a vehicle in a tribal town in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The drone fired two missiles on a suspect vehicle and initial reports suggest three militants were killed, according to a security official, requesting anonymity.

Thousands of Turkish journalists took to the streets here on Sunday demanding the release of colleagues in prison and raising the issue of press freedom.

Journalists supported by activists, intellectuals, and some opposition parties marched in central Istanbul.

Militants opened fire on a passenger van in a lawless northwestern Pakistani town on Sunday, killing at least eight Shiite Muslims and wounding seven others, police said.

The incident took place in Hangu district, 150 kilometers southwest of Peshawar, the capital of insurgency-hit Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province.