Hundreds trapped in Bangladesh

RESCUE teams were desperately tearing through the rubble of a collapsed nine-storey clothes factory in Bangladesh with their hands last night where 200 people are believed to be trapped.

At least 17 bodies were recovered. Police said at least 300 people were in the jumper factory near Savar, a town 20 miles north-west of the capital, Dhaka, when it collapsed.

Seventeen bodies have been recovered, and nearly 200 people were believed to be still trapped beneath the rubble, fire official Selim Newaz Bhuiyan said. Over 90 injured workers managed to escape or were pulled from the debris and taken to hospitals, he said.

The factory, Spectrum Garments, produced nearly 80,000 pieces of clothing for export, mainly to the US, Belgium and Germany, said Kaiser Ahmed, an employee. But he could not specify the brand names of the products. Bangladesh has about 2,500 garment factories employing about 1.8 million workers - about 90% of them women. The South Asian nation exports over €3.6 billion in textiles a year.