Pak rescue workers pull out 65-year-old woman from debris

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Rescue workers today pulled out a 65-year-old woman who was trapped for 32 hours in the debris of a collapsed factory in this eastern Pakistani city and stepped up their search for more survivors under a huge pile of bricks and twisted metal.

"Thank God I am alive! There are other people inside," said Saleha Khatoon after she was rescued from under a pile of jagged concrete blocks on Tuesday afternoon.

The three-storey building housing a factory making veterinary medicines collapsed after a boiler explosion at 8.15 am on Monday. Exhausted but in high spirits, Saleha looked unharmed. She took a deep breath and walked out to the stretcher after drinking some water from a bottle handed to her by rescue workers.

"There are other people inside," she again told her rescuers before being led away from the site.

"We heard a voice while digging through the rubble. Some 100 or so rescuers launched a delicate effort and manually dug a tunnel to reach the spot from where the voice was coming. Finally, after hectic efforts of six hours, we found an elderly woman," Shahid Husain, a rescuer who participated in the operation, told the media.

The bodies of 20 workers, most of them women, have been pulled out of the debris of the factory. Over 20 survivors have been pulled out since Monday and officials said some more people were still buried under the rubble.

Rescue workers said Saleha Khatoon was saved as a wooden log came between her and the rubble.

"We were delighted to see her walking to the stretcher by herself. It made all the people present at the site happy and they started shouting 'God is great'," said Husain.

Saleha was shifted to Jinnah Hospital where doctors found she had a fractured arm. "It will heal within three to four weeks but I will not forget the time I spent under the debris. I didn't lost hope at any stage though," she told reporters.

"I am happy to be alive but at the same time I'm sad as I lost many of my colleagues in the tragedy. They were good people," said Saleha, who belongs to impoverished district of Khushab and had joined the factory last year as a washing woman to supplement her family's meagre income.

The incident has highlighted the lax implementation of safety standards and the violation of labour laws, as a number of young boys were working at the factory, officials said.