Forensic teams in Honduras have begun trying to identify remains of the estimated 358 prisoners who died in a prison fire earlier this week, as harrowing new details about the inferno emerged.

A team of 14 experts from Chile – including an anthropologist, archaeologist, biochemists, forensic odontologists and other medical specialists – will help their Honduran colleagues examine the charred bodies and ruins of the Penitenciaria Nacional de Comayagua.

Women wait to recover the remains of their relatives, killed
in the Comayagua prison fire.
Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

Workers in white suits and masks were on Thursday stacking black body bags at morgues in the capital, Tegucigalpa, amid sobs and shouts from relatives assembled outside, clamoring for news of what is thought to have been the world's worst prison fire in a century.

Flames swept through the jail, which housed some 850 inmates, on Tuesday night shortly after an unnamed inmate phoned the state governor and screamed he was going to burn the place down. He reportedly lit a mattress a few minutes later. The motive remained unclear but there was speculation his girlfriend had finished with him – Tuesday was Valentine's day.

Within minutes, cells were filled with screaming, suffocating, burning men. Guards feared a riot and escape attempt and so fired in the air, kept doors padlocked and barred the fire brigade for at least half an hour.