Hundreds of relatives in Lviv have gathered outside the local morgue in a desperate wait for news as Ukrainian officials try to identify the 83 people killed in the town's air show disaster.

Identifying the victims is a priority, officials say.

Hospital corridors are also full of families searching for loved ones who may be among the 116 injured on Saturday when a fighter jet performing aerobatics crashed into spectators.

The official leading the investigation into what is now the world's deadliest air show accident, Yevhen Marchuk, has said the likeliest reasons are negligence or plane failure.

Click here to see how the tragedy unfolded

President Leonid Kuchma has declared Monday a day of national mourning and has already sacked the country's air force chief and the commander of the air force division which took part in the show.

Ukraine's defence minister has also offered his resignation to the president.

Officials have said it is extremely difficult to identify the victims, because many bodies were ripped apart by metal shards from the plane.

No news

Svetlana Atamaniuk, whose daughter and granddaughters were killed, waited with other families outside the overcrowded morgue for official confirmation of their deaths.

Svetlana Atamaniuk is desperate for information

"My only daughter, her husband and their two daughters are lying in there," she told the Associated Press.

Other families have embarked on an agonising tour of the five hospitals in the western city of Lviv.

A woman who gave her name only as Lyudmila told Reuters news agency she had not heard from her daughter and son-in-law since they went to the show at the Sknyliv air base.

"These days have been the most terrible days of my life," she said. "Nobody is giving me any information."

Mr Marchuk, the chief of Ukraine's Security and Defence Council, who is leading the government inquiry, has said the priority is to identify victims.

Mr Marchuk told a news conference in Lviv that his commission was examining several possible versions of events, including negligence or a technical malfunction.

But he added that it was premature to make any final conclusions.

"No one can say when we will know the real cause of the tragedy, but we will be able to give the broad picture in approximately a week," Mr Marchuk said.

Cash shortages

Many experts have said the air show organisers should have ensured that spectators were not standing too close to the flying area.

About 1,500 people were watching the display when the accident happened.

Video film of the crash shows the plane - a Russian made Sukhoi Su-27 - clip tree tops before hitting the ground and exploding as it cartwheeled along the runway.

The plane's pilots managed to eject to safety seconds before impact.

But many people on the ground did not have a chance to escape and were killed or injured by burning wreckage and flying debris.

The Su-27 has been in service since 1985 and observers say Ukraine's military has been short of cash for maintaining the jets.

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