Families balance hope and despair in race to find survivors in Nepal as 42 Australians still missing

The walls of a teaching hospital are filled with pictures of unidentified victims as authorities collect DNA samples and plan burials before morgues fill up Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Some of them are young, some old; most of them appear to be men. Some of them could be sleeping, except for the mud that covers their bodies. Some, it seems, would be impossible to recognise even if you knew them well. Every few hours Nepalese authorities hang pictures of the deceased, who have not been identified, on a wall at the back of a teaching hospital in Kathmandu. Saluja, a young woman who did not give her last name, stood among a group of more than 100 people watching. Her cousin, 31, was not on the wall that day. “It’s very hard to identify their faces,” Saluja says. As she speaks, some in the crowd take videos to send to other relatives; they stand around comparing them, trying to work out whether the person in the photo is their loved one. The bodies have a piece of paper lying on top of them, showing which district they were found in, with a number to contact. “My cousin is missing,” Saluja says. “He