Death toll in Bangladeshi building collapse rises to 275

A Bangladeshi rescuer looks out from a hole cut in the concrete as he looks for survivors at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.

Bangladeshi rescue workers watch from a damaged section of a wall at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013.

Bangladeshis watch the rescue operations at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013.

Bangladeshi boys watch the rescue operations from a rooftop at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013.

Bangladeshi authorities say 275 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of a building that collapsed in the country’s worst ever disaster for its notoriously unsafe garment industry. Brig.-Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said Friday morning that 61 survivors have been rescued since Thursday afternoon.

Authorities say more than 2,000 people have been rescued from the building since it collapsed on Apr. 24. Deep cracks visible in the walls of a Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday, but factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working.

The disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar is the worst ever for Bangladesh’s booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire less than five months earlier that killed 112 people. Workers at both sites made clothes for major brands around the world; some of the companies in the building that fell say their customers include retail giants such as Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble in search of survivors and corpses, worked through the night and into Thursday amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers’ relatives gathered outside the building, called Rana Plaza. It housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

After the cracks were reported in the walls of Rana Plaza on Tuesday, managers of a local bank that also had an office in the building ordered their employees to leave. The garment factories, though, kept working, ignoring the instructions of the local industrial police, said Mostafizur Rahman, a director of that paramilitary police force.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association had also asked the factories to suspend work starting Wednesday morning, hours before the collapse. “After we got the crack reports, we asked them to suspend work until further examination, but they did not pay heed,” said Atiqul Islam, the group’s president.

Thousands of workers from the hundreds of other garment factories in the Savar industrial zone took to the streets to protest the factory collapse and poor safety standards for the country’s garment workers.

Television reports said that hundreds of protesting workers also clashed with police in Dhaka and the nearby industrial zone of Ashulia. It was not immediately clear whether there were any injuries in those clashes.

The garment manufacturers’ group said the factories in Rana Plaza employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were in the building when it collapsed. Searchers worked through the night to probe the jumbled mass of concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights to people pinned inside.

Abdur Rahim, an employee who worked on the fifth floor, said he and his co-workers had gone inside Wednesday morning despite the cracks in the building, after a factory manager gave assurances that it was safe. About an hour later, the building collapsed. The next thing Rahim remembered was regaining consciousness outside.

On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and that “the culprits would be punished.” Local police Chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman said police and the government’s Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of negligence against the building owner.

Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of the Dhaka district, identified the building owner as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of the ruling Awami League’s youth front. Rahman said police were also looking for the owners of the garment factories. <Compiled from AP and other news reports>