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As the process of busing refugees from the Louisiana Superdome to Houston's Reliant Astrodome haltingly continued, as many as 20,000 other evacuees housed at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center restlessly waited with little prospect of going anywhere soon.

With temperatures rising into the 90s, they spilled out onto Convention Center Boulevard, where they chanted, prayed and angrily denounced authorities for failing to care for the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina still in the city.

"Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. Oh, God, help us!" Angela Perkins, 34, cried as she fell to her knees on the hot, garbage-strewn thoroughfare. "I want to leave. They treat us like animals."

At least seven bodies, including that of an old man lying in a chaise longue on the boulevard's grassy median and a blanket-covered woman in a wheelchair, were scattered outside the convention center, located at the Mississippi River near the foot of Canal Street.

Another corpse, that of an infant, was inside the building.