A teenager whose family assumed he was dead was rescued on Friday after
50 hours trapped under the rubble of a four-story factory which
collapsed this week in eastern Pakistan, officials said. At least 26 people were killed and 103 injured in the collapse in Lahore.
Identified only as Shahid, the teen was among the unspecified number of
missing, government official Mohammad Usman said. He appeared to be in
stable condition.
Shahid's cousin Kalim Ullah told local TV reporters that the family
received a mutilated body from a hospital a day earlier, held a funeral
and buried it. He said the body resembled Shahid and that the family was
in mourning until they saw him alive on TV.
Allah Ditta, an uncle of Shahid, also said it was a "miracle" that
Shahid is alive and that relatives were rushing to Lahore from a town in
the eastern Punjab province to be reunited.
Usman said Shahid crawled out from the rubble without assistance and was
able to talk. He said Shahid complained about pain in his foot, but did
not have any visible injuries.
The rescue came hours after authorities said hopes were starting to fade
for finding more survivors. Jam Sajjad Hussain, a spokesman for the
Punjab Emergency Service, said the 400 rescuers saved the lives of 103
workers since Wednesday, when the building suddenly caved in.
The cause of the collapse is yet to be determined. It happened just over
a week after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake hit Pakistan, killing 273
people and damaging nearly 75,000 homes.
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