Russians yesterday bade farewell to the 118 sailors lost aboard the submarine Kursk, uniting again in sorrow more than two months after the vessel sank in the Barents Sea.
The Russian Navy said divers working on the wreck had pulled out several more bodies yesterday morning.
Russian news agencies quoted Northern Fleet spokesman Mr Vladimir Navrotsky as saying bodies from compartment nine were brought out through a hole cut in the adjacent section. He did not say how many.
The news deepened the drama of a memorial ceremony broadcast nationwide, where the entire crew was represented by the bodies of four sailors recovered from the wreck last week.
"Forgive us," the Russian Defence Minister, Mr Igor Sergeyev, said. "Farewell, and let the ground beneath you be soft as down." Four armoured cars carried the sailors' bodies to Courage Square in the centre of the Northern Fleet's base of Severomorsk.
Top officials addressed a crowd of hundreds beneath a towering bronze second World War monument of a marine machinegunner. Heavy snowfall had left the square blanketed white.
"Even the great Russian language fails to provide words for the bitterness of this loss and tragedy," Mr Sergeyev told the mourners.
"I think there is nobody in Russia who does not suffer this tragedy as their own. It is so hard to imagine that they will never again return, never step across the threshold of their homes, and never rush to embrace their parents, their children, their wives. It was the navy's finest crew, and it remains so in our memory."
A small child's wailing could be heard over the sound of the crowd as a loudspeaker blared a mournful seaman's song.
Nationwide anger over the loss of the submarine was reignited this week after the first four bodies were brought to the surface, along with a note scrawled in the darkness and found in a pocket of one of the crew.
Lieut-Capt Dmitry Kolesnikov had written that 23 sailors had survived the initial blasts that sank the vessel, only to die slowly in the ninth compartment in the rear of the sub.
The note overturned earlier accounts of the disaster. Russian officials, defending themselves from charges that a faster international rescue could have saved lives, had said all crew had died within minutes of the accident.
Officially none of the bodies has been identified, although the one bearing the note is presumed to be Lieut-Capt Kolesnikov's. His family arrived shortly before midnight at the snowbound airport in Murmansk, Severomorsk's sister city.
Divers are now trying to cut a new hole in the hull to gain direct access to the ninth compartment, seen as less dangerous than entering through the adjacent compartment.
The Northern Fleet's commander, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, said on Friday he did not think the divers would be able to recover all 23 bodies from compartment nine.