Relatives storm Honduras morgue after jail fire

Scores of relatives of the 359 inmates killed in a blaze that gutted a Honduran prison broke through police barriers Monday and opened body bags in a desperate search for their kin's remains. Frustrated by the slow pace of the investigation and the identification of the badly charred bodies, relatives took matters into their own hands when morgue officials moved several body bags outside, into their line of sight. The sobbing family members desperately clawed at the bags hoping to find their kin, only to be forced out by riot police, AFP journalists at the scene said. "Look at how my son is, he is tossed out like a dead dog there," said Maria Hernandez, weeping as she opened one of the bags, a fetid stench in the air for hundreds of meters (yards) around. "The delay is beyond unacceptable. If they don't step up the pace of handing over remains, we are going to take over the morgue," threatened Jose Carlos Orellana, who lost his 31-year-old son, who was convicted of homicide. Funerals also were taking place across the impoverished Central American country after the blaze, one of the world's deadliest jail fires. Six days after the flames swept through the overcrowded Comayagua jail -- which had held double its capacity with 852 inmates -- the cause of the fire still was unclear. Honduran President Porfirio Lobo suspended top officials from the country's prison system and called for foreign assistance in the investigations, amid accusations that authorities had been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. A US team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived late Thursday to investigate and Chilean experts also searched the jail.