Cries of pain of the injured and frantic search by the victims' relatives for their loved ones made the air heavy with sadness.

Whenever some injured or dead arrived at the hospital all those anxiously waiting to know the fate of their dear ones rushed there.

Their anxious wait turned into uncertainty as the flow of injured and the dead to the hospital from the factory stopped after midnight.

The long wait of many went in vain as there was no scope to identify some of the bodies that were burnt beyond recognition.

Md Zafar, elder brother of a worker, Hanufa Akter, 18, was seen asking everybody he was meeting on the CMCH premises for the whereabouts of his sister. "She is my younger sister, very beloved sister. Please somehow help me find her dead or alive," he was requesting everyone he was meeting, showing a photograph of Hanufa held in his hand.

Although, Hanufa was a good student, poverty forced her to quit school and take a job in the KTS factory about a year ago, said Zafar in a choking voice, who hails from Gyanpara of Patharghata in Barguna.

Siraj Mia, 40, a physically challenged man, was searching desperately for his 14-year old daughter Asma Begum, the lone bread-earner of a six member family. "My daughter is missing and I can't find her anywhere," said the helpless father with tears rolling down his cheeks.

Farzana, 20, with her tender face severely burnt was crying in pain on a bed in ward no 27 while her injured colleagues were more or less in a similar situation all around her.

Eleven bodies were lying in the CMCH morgue since Thursday night while more charred bodies recovered from the burnt factory have started arriving at General Hospital since yesterday morning.

All the bodies including those from the CMCH morgue were brought and kept in a heap in the General Hospital morgue at Anderkilla by 3:00pm yesterday.

Hundreds of relatives of the workers gathered at both the morgues but no one was allowed to go near the bodies to identify them.

Security forces cordoned off the General Hospital morgue yesterday afternoon leaving the relatives with no other option than to wait there till the autopsies are done.

"The autopsies might not be completed before 10:00am tomorrow," said Nepal Chandra Das, the lone coroner at the morgue, yesterday.

With the charred bodies kept on the floors all around him, Nepal said despite working with dead bodies for a long time the sheer number of so many bodies at a time made him nervous. "It's quite shocking and I never heard of so many people burnt to death in a single fire," he murmured.

"Only in another previous incident back in 1988 I saw so many dead bodies of human beings when some 39 were stampeded at a factory in the city's Pahartali area during a distribution of zakat."

Even then the experience was not so shocking as the bodies were not disfigured beyond recognition, he said.

Mohammed Nurul Islam, father of Salma, 12, a worker in the textile factory, while talking to The Daily Star alleged that he could not even get a chance to take a look at the bodies to see if any of them was his daughter's.

"I have been running between the morgues in vain to know the fate of my daughter," Nurul broke down in tears.

However, Mohammed Mostafa, standing outside the General Hospital morgue, at least got to know about the tragic ends of her cousin Rasheda, 17, and niece Khadiza Begum, 18. He is now in a long arduous wait to get the bodies of his loved ones.