The death toll in the collapse of an eight-storey commercial building in the Bangladeshi capital today rose to 164, as rescuers raced against time to save nearly 1,500 people still trapped under tonnes of debris. “According to the latest count 164 bodies were retrieved and over 1,400 people were rescued alive,” Deputy Commissioner or Administrative Chief of Dhaka district Yusuf Harun said. Television footage showed relatives wailing in shock as the bodies were being kept on open ground of a local high school to be handed over to them, while officials said over 100 bodies were already received by the victims’ families. Site of the tragedy was teeming with crowd who were frantically looking for their trapped relatives and friends. Meanwhile, national flag flew at half-mast as Bangladesh declared a day-day mourning today, while army and paramilitary troops joined fire service, police and elite Rapid Action Battalion in the salvage operations, which officials said could continue for next two days. The building that housed three garment units, a branch of a private bank and some three hundred shops developed cracks two days ago, while regulatory authorities said it was built defying safety rules which eventually caused the tragedy. “The fact is we don’t know yet how many people were killed actually… But I can tell you the building was not built in compliance with the (safety) rules and regulations,” Home Minister Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters yesterday. Public anger mounted as reports said hundreds of mostly women workers of the three garments factories were virtually forced to work. The owners of the Rana Plaza in Savar and the garments factories went into hiding fearing arrest, while the regulatory authorities and police filed separate cases accusing them of illegally constructing the structure and exposing the workers to the fatal accident. Industrial police said two of their detectives were feared dead as they went inside the building to investigate the cracks. PTI
