Nearly 80 children were burnt to death on Friday when a fire raged through a primary school in India's southern Tamil Nadu state, officials said. "Seventy-seven bodies have been recovered," senior police official S. Natarajan told AFP from the temple town of Kumbakonam where the blaze broke out at around 11:00 am (0530 GMT).
Thirty-four other children were severely injured in the fire and were admitted to hospital in Kumbakonam, 350 kilometres from Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu, Natarajani said.
Sobbing parents waited outside a hospital where the bodies of children aged six to 13 years were brought from in the gutted Saraswati Primary School, witnesses said.
Television footage showed heaps of bodies, some locked in embrace.
The fire fighters said the victims stood no chance of survival as the building's third floor thatched roof collapsed on them.
"They were surrounded by fire from all sides. They had no hope from the moment the fire started," a fireman told television stations.
Some senior students from the floors below tried to save the children but the smoke and flames made it impossible to reach them, he added.
Reports from the scene said some of the children had tried to flee down a narrow stairway but suffocated in the stampede.
District administrator J. Radhakrishnan said the fire could have started in the school kitchen where cooks were preparing the noon-meal or it might have been sparked by an electrical short circuit. Radhakrishnan said it was put out within two hours.
Radhakrishnan said that at least 30 children in hospital were suffering from severe burns.
Officials in Madras said medical teams were rushing to the town, as local facilities could not cope with a disaster of such magnitude.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayram, who rushed to the site, ordered a major probe into the deadly inferno and called for criminal action against the school management, saying it had not adhered to basic fire safety norms.
Indian President Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Parliament have expressed anguish over the tragedy and sent condolences to the victim's parents.
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