At least two dead after three-storey building in Lahore collapses, trapping mostly women and children in the rubble
At least two people were killed and up to 100 trapped, thought to be mostly women and children, after a factory collapsed in Lahore.
The desperate cries of children could be heard from beneath the rubble, including two sisters pleading to be pulled out, as rescuers battled to remove the debris of the three-storey factory. It appeared that the facility's boiler or stored gas cylinders had exploded at around 8.30am local time on Monday.
Reports said up to 100 people were stuck beneath wreckage, with two bodies and 15 injured pulled out by noon with the help of mechanical diggers. Many of the trapped were children, who had provided cheap labour at the medicine plant, which was located against regulations amid narrow streets in a residential area. It was believed the survivors could be trapped in the basement.
Angry residents said the factory had been previously closed up to five times on court orders but the political connections of its owners had got it reopened. The owner of the house adjoining the plant, which was also destroyed in the blast, said he had been fighting since 2005 to get police and the courts to shut the factory.
Senior Lahore city official Ahad Cheema, speaking to reporters at the scene, said: "Illegal commercial units are a big problem. It will take time to solve this issue. I'm told this factory was sealed two or three times."
The revelations about the illegality of the factory will add to the political problems of the provincial government of Punjab, which is run by the main opposition party. The administration of Shahbaz Sharif, brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has been hit by multiple crisis of governance, including a deadly outbreak of Dengue fever in 2011 and a scandal this year over medicines given to heart patients at a public hospital that turned out to be poisonous and killed 120 people.