DHAKA, April 11: Thirty workers were killed and dozens of others injured when a nine-storey building housing a garment factory near the Savar export processing zone collapsed early on Monday. Twenty bodies were recovered and 90 workers were rescued from the rubble, but over 100 others were still trapped inside, police said. There were about 300 night-shift workers in the building and police feared that the death toll might go up.

Fire-fighters, army personnel, rapid action battalion, volunteers and relatives frantically used shovels, hammers and bare hands throughout the day to remove the rubble as workers beneath the debris screamed and called for help.

Rescuers at many points made holes by cutting the concrete structure and supplied oxygen and light into the building to save the trapped workers from dying of suffocation.

“We can’t say when the operation will be over as we are facing the largest ever building collapse in the country,” said the director-general of the fire service.

Fire brigade deputy director Selim Newaz Bhuiyan blamed the faulty construction for the collapse.

But director-general Rafiqur Rahman, who was coordinating the rescue operation, believed that the collapse could be due both to boiler explosion and faulty construction.

Survivors and garment factory officials said the collapse had been caused by a boiler explosion, but rescuers and civil engineers blamed the faulty construction of the building for the tragedy.