Bangladesh: Dozens Dead After Building Fall

At least 70 people have died after an eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.

Another 700 are reported to have been injured in the building's collapse which involved several garment factories.

"The toll will rise as conditions of some injured were critical," said Hiralal Roy, a senior emergency ward doctor at the nearby Enam hospital.

Tens of thousands of people gathered at the site, some of them weeping survivors, some searching for family members, with 1,000 people still reported to be trapped inside the building.

Clothing factories are usually staffed 24 hours a day.

Firefighters and soldiers using drilling machines and cranes worked together with local volunteers in the search for other survivors from the building, which fell into itself, leaving it about two storeys tall.

Hundreds of factory workers were trapped inside the building

Some workers complained that the building had developed cracks on Tuesday evening, triggering an evacuation, but they had been forced back to the production lines by their managers.

"The managers forced us to rejoin and just one hour after we entered the factory the building collapsed with a huge noise," said a 24-year-old worker who gave her first name as Mousumi.

"I am injured. But I've not found my husband who was working on the fourth floor," she said, estimating that 5,000 people worked inside the building, which also housed apartments, a bank and shops.

Thousands gathered on the streets where the building collapsed

The collapse stirred memories of a fatal fire in a clothing factory in November that killed 112 people and raised an outcry about safety in the nation's garment industry.

That fire at the Tazreen factory drew international attention to the conditions workers toil under in the $20bn-a-year (£13bn) textile industry in Bangladesh.

The country has about 4,000 garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers - the industry wields vast power in the South Asian nation.

Tazreen did not have emergency exits and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built.

Surviving employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go back to work after the fire alarm went off.

The factory made clothes for Wal-Mart, Disney and other Western brands.

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