Mexico's grieving parents begin burying their children

Most of the fatalities from Friday's blaze at the state-run ABC daycare center in the town of Hermosillo were under the age of two. With many still hospitalized in critical condition, the toll was expected to rise.

Dozens of people carrying flowers and toys came to a small chapel Saturday to bid final farewell to a three-year-old girl named Camila who died in the fire from asphyxiation.

Meanwhile, her four-year-old sister was fighting for her life in a hospital in Guadalajara.

Elsewhere, distraught parents sat outside hospitals awaiting word on the fate of their children, with questions being raised about how the fire began and whether deaths could have been prevented.

President Felipe Calderon cut short a trip to the resort town of Cancun and flew to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, to coordinate the government's response to the tragedy, a presidential source told AFP.

"This has been a painful tragedy for all Mexicans," Calderon said. "I have ordered the federal prosecutor to as soon as possible carry out investigations to help us know exactly what and how it happened, and to work out corresponding responsibility."

Sonora state health secretary Raymundo Lopez said that 38 children had died and another 23 remained hospitalized, including 15 in extremely serious condition.

"We have a boy who is brain dead and obviously not transportable," noted the health secretary.

Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours said six adults had also been hospitalized after the blaze, which broke out when many at the daycare center, located in a Hermosillo working class neighborhood, were taking an afternoon nap.

Some of the injured had been transferred to the western state of Jalisco to be treated by doctors specialized in children's burns, said Daniel Karam of the Mexican Social Security Institute.

One was even flown to a burns unit at a hospital in Sacramento in the US state of California.

Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, told reporters that it was too early to announce a final toll.

Most of the children died from smoke inhalation, officials said. Others died when the roof in the crib room collapsed.

The center lacked emergency exits and the structure was so weak that part of the roof caved in on an area where many newborn babies were sleeping, reports said.