Pakistan hunts for survivors as factory toll hits 19

PAKISTANI rescuers yesterday pulled more survivors and bodies from the rubble of a factory that collapsed in the city of Lahore, as the death toll rose to 19 after the disaster.

The three-storey building used to manufacture veterinary medicines came crashing down after a probable boiler and a gas cylinder explosion at the premises in the congested Multan Road area on Monday, police said. There was jubilation more than 30 hours after the accident when an elderly woman aged about 70 was pulled out alive from the rubble. Rescue workers said they were also clearing a route to recover two boys also spotted alive.

Emergency teams spent night and day digging through the debris with their bare hands, increasingly desperate as cries for help started to recede from mostly women and children trapped beneath concrete slabs.

Workers and volunteers used everything they could — hammers, axes, chisels and shovels — to shift the rubble and pull out the injured, coated in dust.

"We hope to clear most of the rubble by tonight," local rescue chief Rizwan Naseer told reporters, saying that workers were digging tunnels under the rubble to pull out more injured people and dead bodies.

"It is a very slow and difficult operation," Naseer added, saying it took almost five hours to pull out two women alive overnight.

Police official Shoaib Khurram told AFP that 19 people had been killed. Among the dead were at least 11 women, three young girls and three boys. The toll is thought likely to rise further with dozens still believed to be trapped under the concrete mass.

Police said the factory was illegal. Local residents said it had been shut down twice since 2008, but that the owners reopened the premises each time.

"The owners violated the court orders and broke the seals," said top local administration official Ahad Cheema.

Most of those trapped under the rubble were believed to be women and children hired to package the medicines at Orient Labs (Private) Limited.

The factory spotlighted poor safety procedures among Pakistani manufacturers and the use of child labour.

The state-run Jinnah Hospital said it had received 31 injured people, seven of them still in the surgical ward which was smelly and crowded.

Welder Mohammad Amin, who suffered minor facial injuries, said he had just arrived at the factory on Monday morning then the explosion happened. AFP