South Koreans waited today for word on hundreds of people missing and believed incinerated in a subway arson attack that killed at least 126 people and reduced two trains to skeletons.
Anger grew over the deaths and the more than 340 people listed missing in a tragedy that has raised serious questions about safety standards and the ferocity of the inferno.
Grieving relatives in Daegu, 120 miles southeast of Seoul, demanded the mayor talk to them and apologise as the city of 2.6 million flew flags at half-mast for five days of mourning.
Hopelessness hit home for about 1,000 relatives of the missing gathered in an auditorium half a mile from the site as they watched a videotape of the fire scene that showed the burned-out shell of the trains.
"There's nothing left," shrieked an elderly woman. "Where can I find the body of my son?" she said above the sobs of hundreds like her.
Some collapsed and had to be treated when the name of a relative was posted on a board as among those confirmed dead.
At the center of controversy was why a driver kept the doors of his train shut after he pulled into a Taegu subway station alongside another train already ablaze.
A middle-aged man tossed a milk carton full of flaming liquid into a crowded carriage of the first train and it was ablaze within minutes. The fire then spread to the adjoining train, rescue officials said.
But domestic media quoted them as saying the second train sat for 20 minutes with its doors locked and toll was thought to be highest there.
Other questions bubbled to the surface as police took in the driver of the second train, forensic experts began the grim job of identifying charred victims and the list of missing grew to 343. Some of the missing could be among the unidentified bodies.
Relatives and the media asked how the blaze spread so quickly and whether subway officials reacted quickly enough to save people from an inferno which sent black, acrid smoke belching into the sky for hours.
Security cameras caught the arsonist, identified by city officials as a 56-year-old former taxi driver with a history of mental problems, with the blazing milk carton in his hand and people trying to take it from him.
The grainy footage, broadcast on television, showed other passengers on the platform and on the train looking stunned.
Police quoted the man, in hospital with burns and suffering from smoke inhalation, as saying he had planned to commit suicide, but then decided he did not want to die alone.
As the official toll grew to 53 identified dead, 72 unidentified remains and 146 injured, stories emerged of a anxious mobile telephone calls to friends and relatives when the blaze took hold and smoke spread.
Telephone companies were helping people, desperately hoping against hope, to confirm whether relatives had been on the trains or elsewhere in the station by tracing mobile phone signals.
Among the many chilling final phone conversations reported by newspapers was one schoolgirl who told her mother about the fire on her train. "They won't open the doors," the girl said.
"Our prayers with the people of South Korea during this time of sorrow," President Bush said in a message relayed by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
The Pope, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also expressed condolences. There was no immediate response from communist North Korea.