LONDON (AP) -- On the eerily deserted street where a terrorist bomb shredded a double-decker bus, there are silent but frantic cries for help.
Homemade posters hastily taped to phone booths and bus shelters plead for information about Londoners who haven't been heard from since Thursday's attacks. Friends and relatives know it's a race against time, and hopes faded Saturday as the hours ticked by.
''I just have to find him,'' said a tearful Yvonne Nash, who went on television with photos of her fiance, Jamie Gordon, who may have been on the bus where 13 people were killed.
''I have to know what happened,'' she said. ''Is he dead? Is he alive? Not knowing is dreadful.''
Scotland Yard has declined to issue a list of people unaccounted for. Police said Saturday they were looking into more than 1,000 missing-person reports, although they do not believe more than 50 of them are connected to the bombings, suggesting the death toll will remain below 100.
But it could take time: Police said Saturday they had yet to identify any bodies.
Officials said they were opening a 24-hour reception center to provide information, advice and counseling to relatives of the missing. Police also have sent liaison officers for families, said Brian Paddick, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
More than 105,000 calls have been logged to a hot line set up by the police Casualty Bureau, where officials are checking names against a database containing those provided by hospitals, morgues and funeral homes, Sgt. Dave Storer said.
''Some people are still discovering friends and relatives,'' he said.
Not David Webb, 38, who stood in the mist Saturday outside the King's Cross Underground station, not far from where crews were working to retrieve bodies and clues from the wreckage of a subway train where at least 21 people died.
Webb, a teacher, clutched a framed photograph of his 29-year-old sister, Laura, who took the Tube to work Thursday morning and never showed up.
''We don't know where she is,'' he said. ''This is a very upsetting and very traumatic time for us, but we have to remain confident that we'll hear from her soon. We'll keep doing everything we can to find our sister.''
Similar scenes _ chillingly reminiscent of the frantic searches that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York _ played out across London at subway stations and hospitals.
Nash and her family and friends plastered up posters along the route of the No. 30 bus that carried heart-wrenching pleas for any tidbit that might help them track down the man she's been with for seven years and hopes to marry.
''Have you seen this man?'' they read above a grainy photo of a grinning Gordon, a 30-year-old financial adviser.
''Please help us find our friend who is missing. If you have seen him or know where he is, please call the police or our office so that we can let his family and friends know he's safe.''
John Steadman, desperate for news of his missing brother-in-law, Philip Russell, drove to the Royal London Hospital on the city's East End after hearing that some patients still hadn't been identified.
''We came to see if he was one of them. Unfortunately, he wasn't,'' Steadman said.
On Saturday, Michael Matsushita _ a New York City man who moved to London after the Sept. 11 attacks _ was reported missing by friends and relatives. He normally took a subway that passed through King's Cross station on his way to work, they said.
''We're just going to stay home and watch TV, pray, and wait for a good phone call,'' Eileen Matsushita, who identified herself as the 37-year-old man's aunt, said outside the family's apartment building in New York.
Some people, unwilling to believe the worst, stoically held out hope that their loved ones had fainted, suffered memory loss and lost their cell phones, ending up in a hospital with no way to easily call home.
That was a plausible explanation a day after the attacks. But by Saturday, more than 48 hours after the bombings, many of those still searching for relatives were losing hopes of finding them alive.
Emanuel Wundowa, a 53-year-old father of two, said he was ''beside myself with worry'' that he hadn't heard from his wife, Gladys, 51.
''She is the type of woman who would ring me if she was going to be 10 minutes late,'' he said. ''But since the explosions, I have heard nothing.''
As relatives and friends waited anxiously by their phones, they replayed memories of the last time they saw their missing loved ones.
Ruth Parathasangary was haunted by how her 30-year-old daughter, Shyanuja, left the family's home Thursday morning to go to work _ a commute that usually involved a ride on a No. 30 bus.
''She didn't say anything when she left,'' she said. ''She just gave me a sweet smile.''
