BARIPADA - Indian authorities yesterday prepared a mass cremation for unidentified victims of a searing fire that killed at least 200 worshippers at a Hindu gathering.
Rescue workers began shifting corpses, charred beyond recognition, in trucks from the site of Sunday's inferno to a nearby cremation ground in the eastern town of Baripada, witnesses said.
"It will not be possible to identify all the bodies," the deputy police chief, Mr P.K. Mishra, said. "The administration will take unidentified bodies for mass cremation."
Authorities said they had identified only 49 of 168 bodies found in the debris of the inferno that engulfed makeshift bamboo and straw shelters at a camp site in Baripada, 220 km north of the capital of Orissa state, Bhubaneshwar. The authorities said 32 of 187 injured had died in hospital.