ZHUYUAN, China – The bodies are everywhere. Some are zipped inside white vinyl bags and strewn on the floor. Others have been covered in a favorite blanket or dressed in new clothes. There are so many bodies that undertakers want to cremate them in groups. They are all children.

"Our grief is incomparable," said Li Ping, 39, eyes rimmed red, as he and his wife slowly, carefully pulled a pair of pink pajamas over the bruised, naked body of their 8-year-old daughter, Ke. "We got married late and had a child late. She is our only child."

The earthquake that struck Sichuan province on Monday has so far claimed 15,000 lives across China, and thousands more people remain missing or trapped beneath rubble. But the awful scene at this local morgue is a sad reminder that too many of the dead are children in a country where most families can have only one.

These children symbolized the earthquake's seemingly indiscriminate cruelty. But the cruelty, in the eyes of their parents, was also man-made.

Several schools in nearby Dujiangyan collapsed while classes were under way. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made emotional visits to two of them, including Xinjian Primary School, where parents say officials told him the death toll was 20 pupils.

"I am Grandpa Wen Jiabao," the prime minister said on his visit as he watched two children being pulled from the rubble, according to Xinhua, the official state news agency. "Hold on, kids! You'll definitely be rescued."

But enraged parents interviewed at the morgue Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning say local officials lied to the prime minister to hide the true toll at Xinjian, which they estimate at more than 400 dead children. Several parents blamed local officials for a slow initial rescue response and questioned the structural safety of the school building. They also were furious that officials forbade them to search for their children for two days.

"Before Wen Jiabao came, the whole school was filled with children's bodies," said one mother who sat outdoors at the morgue with her husband beside the covered body of their 8-year-old daughter. "Her father and I had stood outside the school since the earthquake. We pleaded with the government, 'If she is dead, I want to see the body. If she is alive, I want to see her.' "

Her husband leaned into the candlelight. "We're telling you the truth," he said. "Get the truth out."

The morgue is an hour outside Dujiangyan on an isolated road, yet the parking lot was filled at 1:50 a.m. Thursday. Family members clustered around the bodies of children. Some burned fake money to bring their child good fortune in the afterlife.

In one room, 25 small bodies were scattered on the floor. Some children had already been taken away; an empty white body bag lay near a sneaker and a filthy pair of boy's trousers. Some families had placed flowers or sticks of incense inside empty water bottles as makeshift memorials.

"There are more in there," said one man, pointing to a rear door. He walked outside to a covered walkway and paused. Scores of bodies, covered with sheets, were lined in two long rows on the concrete floor. Others were placed in an adjacent room. Parents sobbed or sat silently beside bodies.

"They are all students," said the man in the blue shirt. "Look," he said, pointing to a red-and-white jacket folded beside one body. "That is the school uniform."

The two rows of bodies came to an open door that led to the large steel furnaces used for cremation. In China, the dead are almost always cremated, usually fairly soon after death. Usually, there is enough time for funeral ceremonies and rituals, but parents said officials at the morgue were worried about cremating so many bodies before they started to decompose. So some parents have been asked if their children could be cremated with dead friends to save time.

Inside the morgue on Wednesday afternoon, parents walked through rooms lined with bodies on the floor, lifting sheets in the unwanted search to identify a lost child. Cai Changrong, 37, held an urn containing the ashes of his cremated 9-year-old daughter. His wife, Hu Xiu, could not stop wailing.

"We didn't find any bruises or injuries on her body," said Ms. Hu. "But she lost all her nails. She was trying to scratch her way out. I think my daughter suffocated to death."

Jim Yardley,

The New York Times