HONG KONG?Philippine authorities sent the bodies of three of the victims in the Manila bus hijacking to the wrong families, Hong Kong said Thursday, in the latest of a series of missteps in the handling of the hostage crisis.

The eight bodies were shipped back on Aug. 25 to Hong Kong, where tearful relatives laid wreaths on the coffins of their loved ones at the airport as officials stood in attention?but three families were paying their respects to the wrong bodies.

The three families discovered the mistake when they opened the coffins at the morgue later that night, Hong Kong?s Security Bureau said in a statement.

The families had identified the bodies in Manila, so it?s possible that funeral parlor workers in the Philippines mislabeled them, the statement said.

The Security Bureau didn?t identify which victims were mixed up.

In Manila, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said she would investigate.

?If there was a mix-up of those names, we apologize,? Soliman said. ?It was really the desire to facilitate and bring the bodies to Hong Kong as quickly as possible because that will ease the pain of the families.?

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, who is heading the hostage incident investigation, said she was unaware of any mislabeling.

?There is no such indication in the reports that we received so far, but we can always verify that,? she said, adding that this could be part of the inquiry.

Bodies correctly labeled

Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine National Red Cross, said the victims? bodies were correctly labeled before they were sent to the funeral parlor. However, she could not verify if the coffins had been properly tagged.

?They were identified in the hospitals by the travel agency and the family members,? Pang said.

?The family members claimed (the bodies) in the hospitals and then they were sent out for postmortem care.?

?As far as we are concerned, we wrote the labels correctly with the assistance of the Chinese Embassy,? Harold Manipol, owner of the St. Harold Funeral Parlor in Manila, told the Inquirer.

Outrage in Hong Kong

This wealthy southern Chinese financial hub has been simmering with anger over the deaths.

Hong Kong residents have been outraged that the Philippine National Police bungled negotiations with the hostage-taker, a former police officer seeking reinstatement, as well as the rescue operation.

Hong Kong residents have denounced President Benigno Aquino III as ?scum? in heated online messages.

Hong Kong?s Legislative Council was to discuss the tragedy in a special meeting later on Thursday and vote on a resolution declaring that the rescue operation suffered from ?serious failures.?

The backlash has also extended to mainland China. Thousands of Chinese tourists have cancelled their flight and hotel bookings. Reports from Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Jeannette I. Andrade