BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana authorities yesterday charged the owners of a New Orleans area nursing home with negligent homicide after 34 patients perished in the facility in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

On a day that Louisiana's death toll escalated to 423, state Attorney General Charles Foti said the owners of St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish had been warned repeatedly by government officials and the news media that Katrina was coming, were asked if they wanted to evacuate the patients and declined to do so. "In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients," he said.

Foti announced the charges against the owners, Mable Mangano, 62, and Salvador Mangano, 65, at a late afternoon news conference here. He said they had turned themselves in and been booked on 34 counts of negligent homicide at the East Baton Rouge Parish jail.

Foti also said the state would investigate the deaths of 45 patients whose bodies were discovered Monday at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and any other instances where possible negligence may have led to the deaths of senior citizens or others unable to care for themselves.

"I'm going to look at every place in the affected area where patients died of unnatural causes," he said. A hospital or health care facility with "people that can't make a free choice because they are sick or unable to care for themselves has a duty to provide for their safety."

Bob Habans, an attorney for the Manganos, said the couple was "completely innocent." He said the couple and their children and grandchildren had attempted to evacuate residents and had saved 50 people at the nursing home. "When all of the facts come out, everyone will know that they were heroes in this tragedy," he said.

As state officials issued an updated death toll, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, once again ripped into the Federal Emergency Management Agency for its failure to move more rapidly to collect bodies of those who died in the storm and its aftermath.

Saying she had expressed her "absolute frustration"to federal authorities about the pace of recovery of bodies, Blanco told reporters, "I cannot stand by while this vital operation is not being handled appropriately." She said the state had signed a contract with a body-recovery company that had been in prolonged discussions with FEMA to do the same work.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the on-scene federal coordinator of disaster relief, responded in a written statement that said: "The state has always maintained direct control over the mortuary process following this tragedy. We are committed to a process that treats the victims of Katrina with dignity and respect and accomplishes the mission as quickly as possible. We will work with state officials on what they believe to be the best solution for their constituents."

Meanwhile, there were additional signs of recovery along the battered coast. The New Orleans airport resumed limited commercial service with the arrival of a Northwest Airlines flight that carried only about 30 passengers, including federal emergency relief officials. The port of New Orleans was due to handle its first ship since before the hurricane hit on the morning of Aug. 29 - well ahead of predictions that it could be out of business for months.

The overall death toll from the storm topped more than 640 yesterday, including 218 in Mississippi and a few deaths in Alabama. In Louisiana, the number of confirmed dead leaped from 279 to 423, and officials in New Orleans said many more bodies are likely to be found as waters recede an average of one city block a day. This allows them to reach some of the neighborhoods that experienced the most severe flooding. State mortuary workers said they were ramping up their manpower in New Orleans yesterday to remove more bodies.

As the work shifts from rescue and evacuation of the living toward the recovery of remains, the U.S. military has already begun planning for withdrawing some of the 68,000 troops, 21 ships and dozens of aircraft from the Gulf Coast region, senior military officials said.

A large-scale troop pullout is already underway in Mississippi, with all of the several thousand out-of-state National Guard forces there scheduled to have departed within eight to 10 days, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, said in an interview.

Military forces are expected to remain longer in Louisiana, but with the primary search effort in New Orleans expected to be completed by Wednesday, thousands of troops are expected to start departing within weeks, according to FEMA and military officials.

"It will be weeks, not months" when active-duty soldiers begin leaving Louisiana, said Brig. Gen. Mark Graham, deputy commanding general of Fifth U.S. Army. About 7,200 active-duty troops, including 5,200 soldiers and 2,000 Marines, are now engaged in relief work.

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