DOZENS KILLED IN BUILDING COLLAPSE

An eight-story building collapsed today on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital, killing more than 70 people and injuring hundreds.

The eight-storey commercial building housed three garments units, a bank branch and around three hundred shops.



Locals said around 6,000 workers used to work in the factories located in the building.

Man buried inside the collapsed building

Authorities fear many more people are still trapped inside the ruins of the commercial building, which housed several garment factories and a shopping mall, the agency

Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) reported.

Health Minister A.F.M. Ruhal Huq said the death toll exceeded 70, the agency reported, and an army officer overseeing the rescue effort said that at least 700 people had been injured.

The collapse is the latest disaster to befall the garment industry in Bangladesh. A fire at a clothing factory in a suburb of Dhaka in November killed at least 112 people.

More than 70 people died the last major building collapse in Bangladesh in 2005, according to BSS. That disaster involved a multistory garment factory in the same area as the building that gave way today.

The dead bodies and the injured were being retrieved from the pile of debris with makeshift slides being made from cloth.