Cries of anguish as S. Korea ferry toll tops 100

JINDO, South Korea - For a moment there is silence in the tent where bodies from the ferry disaster are brought for identification. Then the anguished cries begin.

"How will your mother live without you?" a woman cried out Tuesday.

The confirmed death toll from the April 16 disaster off South Korea's southern coast reached 130 on Tuesday, officials said, and about 170 people were still missing.

The victims are overwhelmingly students of a single high school in Ansan, near Seoul. More than three-quarters of the 323 students are dead or missing, while nearly two-thirds of the 153 other people on the ferry Sewol survived.

The number of corpses recovered has risen sharply since the weekend, when divers battling currents and low visibility were finally able to enter the vessel.

Emergency task force spokesman Koh Myung Seok said bodies have mostly been found on the third and fourth floors of the ferry, where many passengers seemed to have gathered. Many students were housed in cabins on the fourth floor, near the stern of the ship, Koh said.

One by one, coast guard officers carried the newly arrived bodies covered in white sheets from a boat to a tent on the dock of Jindo island Tuesday.

The bodies are then driven in ambulances to two tents: one for men and boys, the other for women and girls. Families listen quietly outside as an official briefs them, then line up and file in. Only relatives are allowed inside.

Bodies are being identified visually, but family members have been providing DNA samples in case decomposition makes that impossible.

Twenty-two of the 29 members of the ferry's crew survived, and nine of them have been arrested or detained in connection with the investigation.

The four crew members arrested Tuesday talked to reporters after a court hearing, their faces hidden with caps, hooded sweatshirts, and masks.

One said they tried to correct the ferry's listing early on, but "various devices, such as the balance weight, didn't work. So we reported the distress situation, according to the captain's judgment, and tried to launch the lifeboats, but the ferry was too tilted and we couldn't reach."

The captain has said he waited to issue an evacuation order because the current was strong, the water was cold, and passengers could have drifted away before help arrived. Maritime experts said he could have ordered passengers to the deck - where they would have had a greater chance of survival - without telling them to abandon ship.

In Ansan, funerals were held for more than 10 of the teens Tuesday, and education officials were building a temporary memorial that they expected to complete by Wednesday.