ISLAMABAD : Rescue workers on Tuesday pulled a 65-year-old woman out alive after she was trapped for 31 hours in the rubble of a collapsed factory in an eastern Pakistan city, as the death toll from the accident rose to 18.
The three-story factory manufactured medicine and collapsed on Monday after several gas cylinders inside exploded. It had been set up illegally in a residential area of Lahore and continued operations even though the government tried to shut it down three times, officials said.
Rescue workers on Tuesday heard 65-year-old Saleha Bibi screaming for help, and it took them several hours to pull her out from the jagged pile of concrete blocks, said Mr Rizwan Naseer, head of the state-run rescue service in Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital.
Mdm Bibi said she hid underneath a machine when the roof of the room where she was working started to cave in.
