LAHORE: At least 11 people, eight of them women and three teenage boys, were killed when a three-storey factory building owned by a pharmaceutical company caved in after a huge blast in New Town area on Monday.
Nineteen injured workers were rescued but many others remained trapped in the rubble till late in the evening. (Some TV channels put the death toll at 14)
Witnesses and rescue personnel said a huge blast was apparently caused either by the boiler or by gas cylinders in the boiler section of the factory.
The building collapsed trapping over 50 workers, most of them young women and teenage boys. The factory was located in a residential area and the blast also destroyed an adjacent house and partially damaged another.
According to a resident, Orient Labs (Pvt) Ltd. which deals in veterinary injections had been sealed by government agencies at least twice in the past. It was illegally operating in the area and residents had filed a case in a civil court seeking closure of the factory because it was in the residential area.
The intensity of the blast shook the entire area and panicked people came out of their homes. Some of them started rescue work immediately after the blast and were later joined by personnel of rescue agencies.
Senior Superintendent of Police (Operations) Sarfraz Ahmad Falki told Dawn that police received a call about the blast at around 8:30am and a second call later saying that the building had collapsed trapping the people inside.
He said rescue work was continuing till late in the night.
He said the blast appeared to have taken place in the building’s rear section which housed boilers. Some gas cylinders were also lying there. He said he feared causalities might rise because rescuers had not been able to remove the huge amount of debris. Police identified the deceased as 13-year-old Muhammad Asif and Tanveer Sagheer, Salma Bibi, Fauzia Amjad, Nasreen Sardar, Ambreen, Faisal, Maryam Akhtar and Shakeela. A headless body found in the debris was identified as that of Alisha, 16. A teenage boy could not be identified.
