Distraught relatives of victims from the Korean Air disaster on Guam reacted with fury at the crash scene yesterday, as the death toll mounted and a painstaking investigation got under way.
Three passengers from KAL Flight 801 died in hospital during the night, taking the death toll to 227 and leaving just 27 survivors, many of them fighting for their lives, officials said.
Around 200 anguished relatives arrived from Seoul on a special flight yesterday. Many were unable to contain their tears or their growing anger at Korean Air, which made a public apology in South Korea but faces record insurance payouts.
Some relatives, who accused KAL of failing to give proper assistance, refused to stay in the hotel organised by the airline, where an altar has been set up for mourners.
A fleet of buses took families to Nimitz Hill, where the Boeing 747-300B crashed in the early hours of Wednesday about five km from Agana airport.
While two busloads of grieving relatives were allowed to see the scene around the charred tail section of the plane and surrounding debris scattered over rocky jungle terrain, two others were not.
Police ordered them away from the observation point, rather than allow the families to see for themselves where their kin died.
A crying woman exclaimed: "We want to get off. This is not a tour."
One distressed man clutched the Guam governor, Mr Carl Gutierrez, and burst into tears on his shoulder. Several women fainted and had to be assisted from the hillside.
The governor also spoke to Mr Tatsuo Matsuda, father of 11year-old Rika Matsuda, whom Mr Gutierrez rescued from the plane. The girl's mother was killed in the disaster.
US aviation investigators began sifting through the wreckage for clues into the cause of the crash. Mr George Black of the US National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) flew in from Washington at the head of 20 investigators.
A spokeswoman for the governor said that up to 60 investigators, including members of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would soon be at the site.
Within the perimeter of the crash site and under a scorching tropical sun, more than 100 soldiers wearing protective face masks could be seen loading and lifting body bags containing the remains of the victims.
Other investigators were to interview survivors of the crash and examine air traffic control voice tapes for clues as to what happened.
When a forensic examination of the wreckage of the plane has been completed, authorities "will take the bodies out of the wreckage", Mr Gutierrez said. The only bodies recovered so far are those thrown from the plane.
The first survivors from the crash flew back to Seoul yesterday. A specially equipped medivac flight took eight of the 27 survivors.
"These are all patients with moderate to medium severity of burns and other injuries," said a US naval spokesman, Lieut David Grai.
Speculation about the cause of the crash has been centred on the bad weather when the aircraft was landing, the breakdown of the airport's Glide Slope Signal (GSS) system and why KAL changed the aircraft.
KAL normally used an Airbus on the Seoul-Guam route but had changed to a Jumbo jet because it was the summer season and there were extra passengers, reports have said.
Experts have said the crew on the Boeing 747 would not necessarily be as familiar with the terrain as the Airbus crew normally on the flight. The Guam governor admitted the GSS system, which sends out signals to guide down planes, had been out of operation since July 8th. However he said all airlines had been alerted and that hundreds of jetliners had landed since then, without problems.
The airline has suggested bad weather and the GSS fault caused the crash. The NTSB chairman, Mr Jim Hall, has said this was "speculation". The two black-box flight recorders were being examined in Hawaii and Washington.