LAHORE: Rescuers in Pakistan have pulled a teenager alive from the rubble of a collapsed factory near Lahore 50 hours after the structure toppled, officials said over the weekend.
The teenager had been trapped for more than two days after the collapse and his family, thinking him dead, had already identified and buried another recovered body they believed to be his.
"An 18-year-old Muhammad Shahid was also evacuated alive 50 hours after the building collapsed by the blessing of God Muhammad Usman, a top administration official in Lahore, said.
The four-storey Rajput Polyester poly- thene bag factory came crashing down on Wednesday evening, and at least 37 bodies have so far been recovered from the wreckage.
Mr Shahid's discovery ignited emotional scenes at the site as workers chanted "Allahu Akbar (God is great)" and encouraged each other to boost morale.
The news was a welcome surprise to his family who had mistakenly identified the dead body of another boy earlier this week as Mr Shahid. The family had buried the remains of the other corpse in their ancestral town of Kabirwala, some 265km from Lahore.
Officials have said at least 150 people were in the factory when it came down and it was unclear how many dead or alive may still be trapped.
Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharifhas said the factory may have suffered struc- tural damage in the Oct 26 quake, which killed almost 400 people across Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Provincial labour minister Raja Ashfaq Sarwar said that an enquiry into the collapse "is being conducted and we will probe all angles."
The investigation report will be submit- ted two least 24 people died last year when a mosque collapsed in the same city, while more than 200 people lost their lives, mostly due to collapsed roofs, follow- ing torrential rain and flooding in 2014.
In 2012, at least 255 workers were killed when a fire tore through a clothing factory in Karachi, one of the deadliest industrial accidents in Pakistani history. AFP