Factory bosses arrested in Bangladesh building collapse

The entrance of a school was covered with photographs of those still missing after the collapse of a building — where low-cost garments were made for Western brands including Canada’s Joe Fresh — killing at least 340 people in Savar,  Bangladesh.

Volunteer workers lined up coffins in a school field on Saturday, just a few kilometres away from where the building collapsed on Wednesday. Many mourned the loss of their loved ones.

One volunteer said some of the bodies were decomposed and unclaimed.

“The bodies we are now recovering don’t have identities,” a volunteer worker named Kamrul said. “Most of the bodies are decomposed, so we have given some of those to Anjuman, [an organization which takes care of unidentified bodies,] for burial as bad smells are coming out from those bodies.”

Others held up photographs of missing relatives as they anxiously waited for news.

“Where have they gone? There were hundreds of workers,” said Parul Begum, a woman looking for her sister. “Now we are not getting them neither alive nor dead. Please let us get them either dead or alive.”

Rescue efforts continued 72 hours after the deadly collapse.

Two factory bosses were arrested in Bangladesh, while the owner of the eight-storey building that crumbled around more than 3,000 workers was still on the run.

Remarkably, people were still being pulled alive from the precarious mound of rubble — 20 since dawn on Saturday.

Frantic efforts were under way to extract 15 people who were trapped under the broken concrete and were being given dried food, bottled water and oxygen.

About 2,500 people have been rescued, at least half of them injured, from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 30 kilometres from Dhaka.

With files from CityNews.ca staff