Indian doctors battled yesterday to save the lives of survivors from a devastating fire in a school in southern India that killed 90 children in the little town of Kumbakonam. Nearly 20 children are still in hospital, some with severe burn injuries.

Some children in a nearby government hospital had suffered 30 to 50 percent burns, and one of them was running a fever, senior district official J. Radhakrishnan told Reuters.

Dozens of people marched silently through the town late on Saturday to demonstrate sympathy for the victims? families and to press the state government to act against schools operating from makeshift premises. They placed garlands and floral wreaths next to the entrance of the burnt shell of the Sri Krishna School where gaping holes made by children trying to escape the fire and by fire officials trying to save them were seen in the walls.

Officials said about 700 children in the school at the time had managed to escape. Angry residents and relatives turned on the teachers at the school, accusing them of having left the building and leaving some of their charges behind.

Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, said the government had sanctioned a total of 10 million rupees in aid for the families of the victims and five million to set up a fire safety project near Kumbakonam.

The blaze began in a kitchen where lunch was being cooked, and then spread to the school?s palm-thatched roof. Many children were trapped in a large classroom with just one exit, and died after the blazing roof collapsed on top of them to block their way out. Others were suffocated and died as they tried to run down narrow staircases.

Owners of the school arrested

Newspapers criticised the lack of fire safety arrangements and the fact that cooking was being done beneath a thatched roof. The state government has ordered all schools in the state operating in makeshift structures, including those with thatched roofs, to shut down, newspapers and television channels reported.

Police have arrested three members of the family that owned and ran the school, including the headmistress, as well as the cook and contractor who ran the lunch programme. ?What were the teachers doing? Not one of them was injured in the fire. And the school?s owners. What were they doing? There was no proper way for the children to escape. This is a scandal?, said Kotteeswaran, who lost his 8-year-old nephew in the fire.

Giri VENKATESAN