International

200 killed in Bangladesh building collapse

Savar: over 200 people killed in one of the worst building collapses in Bangladesh. “So far 204 bodies were retrieved and 2,013 people were rescued alive from under the debris,” Major General Abul Hassan Sarwardy, overseeing the rescue campaign, told reporters on the outskirts of Dhaka, where the tragedy took place on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, national flag flew at half-mast as Bangladesh declared a day of mourning today. Director of the Industrial Police Mostafizur Rahman has blamed the garment factory owners for the collapse, as they were operating their units ignoring the cracks spotted in the building on Tuesday.

“The Industrial Police had asked the owners of the factories to suspend operations after cracks were noticed in Rana Plaza. We had asked them to operate the factories only after a structural inspection by engineers,” Rahman said.

Bangladesh’s booming garment industry has been plagued by fires and other accidents for years. The country witnessed the last major building collapse in 2005 when over 70 people were killed after a multi-storey garment factory collapsed in the same area.

The owners of the Rana Plaza in Savar and the garment factories went into hiding fearing arrest, as the regulatory authorities and police filed separate cases accusing them of illegally constructing the structure and exposing the workers to the fatal accident.

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