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100 missing, yet rescuers predict no more bodies

Death count rises to 75 as 13 more bodies retrieved

SHAMIM ASHRAF and EMRAN HOSSAIN EMON
Rescuers sped up operations at the collapsed sweater factory in Savar yesterday, as they believe 'there
may not be any more bodies' in the rubble, a week into the country's deadliest building collapse.
Rigor mortis and relatives' sob turned the air heavy yesterday afternoon when rescuers pulled out
nine more mutilated bodies from the rubble.
At 9:45pm, the mutilated bodies of four ansars were recovered from the rubble of the first floor.
SEE PAGE 15 COL 7 FROM PAGE 1
The recovery sent the death toll to 75. Eighty-four have been rescued alive so far. One of them died at hospital. More than one hundred are feared missing.
Eight of the bodies recovered yesterday have been identified as Shah Alam, Mintu Mia, Babul Hossain, Rakibul Islam, Jahangir Hossain, Abu Bakar Siddiq, Shahinur Rahman and Abul Kalam. One male remains unknown.
The four ansars were identified as Ramjan Ali, Anwar Hossain, Samrat Alam, and Shamsul Alam.
The rescuers are now concentrating on clearing away the debris and are finding only dead bodies, Parimal Chandra Kundu, a Fire Service instructor, told The Daily Star.
Some relatives at the accident site worried that the quickening pace of the clean up may dash any hopes they have of their loved ones being rescued. "Will my brother be able to come out alive if they pull the debris so cruelly?" asked a delirious-looking Anis, a knitting operator of the factory, who awaits word of her brother Azmal.
"Bring me my brother or give me a knife," Anis said, beating her chest. "What will I say to his (Azmal) family if I can't take my beloved brother to them," she wailed, collapsing on the ground beside a pile of coffins.
While relatives hold on to a thin hope that the missing workers might still be saved, the rescuers say this is impossible.
"There is no possibility of anyone's survival inside without food and water amidst such hot weather after such a long time. If anyone survives, it would be a miracle," Brigadier Gen. Nizam Uddin, who is co-ordinating the massive rescue operations, told The Daily Star yesterday afternoon.
He claimed 75 percent of rescue has already been done.
Speaking about the decision to speed up the operation, he said, "We're presently removing the 2nd and 3rd floor where, we've information, work goes on only during the daytime. We've sped up the operation only after getting this information and conducting a primary check a few days ago, which found no response of any trapped."
He added that rescue workers who entered the rubble through open spaces found no signs of life.
Replying to this correspondent's query about the still missing 101 workers, whose names have been enlisted with the army control room set up beside the site, Nizam Uddin said, "I don't think the number would be so many. The names were put there whenever people reported their
brothers or sisters or cousins. There might be repetitions or other problems with the listing."
However, some workers who came out alive from the ground floor claimed there may be over one hundred workers on that floor alone.
As hundreds of anxious relatives and curious onlookers waited beside security barriers, rescuers from the Fire Service, Roads and Highways and the army were splitting the collapsed structure into small pieces, using vibrators and gas cutters and then removing them with cranes.
"We're presently working on the floor of 2nd floor in the middle and western part and 4th and 5th floor at other sides," said Parimal Chandra Kundu, the fire service instructor.
"Although we don't expect anyone alive after this long time, there might be some unconscious people in void spaces inside. We cannot rule out this possibility," he added.
Brigadier Gen. Nizam Uddin expressed his hope of finishing the task before Friday, adding that the efforts might have been expedited had the owners co-operated.
"More people might have been rescued alive and we could do the rescue faster had the owners provided us the design of the building and the number of people working on each floor," he said.
The bodies rescued yesterday are too mutilated to identify. "I've identified my cousin (Shahin, a knitting operator) from his moneybag, T-shirt and shoe," said Ismail, standing beside Shahin's coffin.
Ismail, who have been waiting in queue since the collapse, burst into tears as rescuers put Shahin's mutilated body near a medical tent after pulling it out from the 3rd floor yesterday noon.
Statistics at the army control tent show 80 percent of the rescue has been completed at the middle part, 75 percent at the northern part and 80 percent at the southern part.
"If we get more bodies, identifying them will be big problem," said fire fighter Parimal.
Rescuers said some of the corpses already recovered were badly decomposed, and could be identified only by their clothes and mobile phones they had in their pockets.
The lack of equipment, the factory's location on marshland and narrow access roads to the site hampered the rescue efforts in the hours after the disaster, the deadliest in the country's accident-prone garment industry.