With flowers, silent prayers and tearful tributes, Japan Monday marked the eighth anniversary of a crippling earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that devastated its northeastern coast and left some 18,500 people dead or missing. P

The magnitude 9.0 quake -- which struck under the Pacific Ocean on March 11, 2011 -- and the resulting tsunami caused widespread damage and took the lives of thousands of people.

A powerful earthquake rocked northern Japan early on Tuesday, briefly disrupting cooling functions at a nuclear plant and generating a small tsunami that hit the same Fukushima region devastated by a 2011 quake.