KUMBAKONAM, July 18: Indian doctors battled on Sunday to save the lives of survivors from a devastating fire in a school in southern India that killed 90 children.

Nearly 20 children are still in hospital, some with severe burn injuries, in the little town of Kumbakonam that has been shrouded in a pall of gloom since Friday's blaze.

"I had two hands. God has saved one, but I have lost the other," cried a mother whose 8-year-old daughter, Suzy Mary, survived though her 10-year-old son died in the fire. Some children in the government hospital had suffered 30 to 50 per cent burns, and one of them was running a fever, senior district official J. Radhakrishnan said.

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 while black flags hung from its walls blackened by the fire. 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. The blaze began in a kitchen where lunch was being cooked, and then spread to the school's palm-thatched roof. -Reuters