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Qashem Mollah, whose 19-year-old daughter Parveen Akter is missing in the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh.

Almost one month after a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing at least 1,127, relatives still gather daily at the site amid the rubble holding pictures of their missing loved ones. Almost all the pictures are of women.

“We have looked for her body everywhere and asked everyone,” said Qashem Mollah, whose 19-year-old daughter Parveen Akter had worked at the doomed Rana Plaza for three years. “The police don’t tell us anything and just dismiss us.”

Identifying bodies that are found in the rubble is now almost impossible, as daytime temperatures reach more than 86F and hopes diminish of a repeat of miracles such as the mother who survived 16 days under the wreckage.

“The faces had gone, there was nothing left of them, it was horrible,” said Mollah.“My daughter has gone, she was everything to us. We have lost everything.”

As the eldest child, Parveen provided for her family of nine living 150 miles away in the rural district of Pabna.

Mollah is too ill to work, and the family - which also included her grandparents - relied on Parveen to survive. With overtime, Parveen was able to earn up to $102 a month to feed them all.

Her story has echoes throughout the Bangladesh garment industry, where salaries often support large extended families.

Of the four million people working in clothing factories, 85 per cent are women, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

“I wish I had a garments job instead of laboring in the fields, look at my hands,” said Alisha Begum, who had come to the scene of the disaster to look for the body of her younger sister, Rehana. Her mother held a piece of paper with her daughter’s details.

“I can’t read or write which why I have to work out in the sun. Without basic reading, you can’t get a job in this type of factory.”

Her farm income was small, meaning her dead sister not only supported the whole family but also Alisha’s husband. “Hundreds of people have come from our district for these jobs,” she added.

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The mother and sister of missing 19-year-old worker Parveen Akter.

The ready-made garments (RMG) industry accounts for more than 75 per cent of Bangladesh’s export income and is the largest employer of women, according to the American Journal of Sociological Research.

The majority of women come from villages where employment is scarce and families struggle to survive. Those who stay in rural areas must usually choose between working as farm hands or domestic servants, and so RMG jobs not only offer good wages but can elevate women’s social status.

The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development concluded that, for many women, RMG work was “for all its many problems, was a better way to make money than what one had done in the past.”

Kolpana Akter, from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity said: “These jobs have also helped in the reduction of forced marriages among young teenagers. The sector is not solely responsible for it, but it has a contribution.”

Akter has constantly campaigned for the safety of these workers and was recently instrumental in getting 31 western retailers, including Zara and H&M to sign a health and safety accord for the protection of garment workers – although Gap and Wal-Mart are among the hold-outs.

She said such work may increase women’s social respectability but their treatment by factory owners or supervisors leaves a dent in their dignity because they are powerless to do complain about conditions for fear of losing their job.

“These women regularly tell me that the retailers have excessive production targets and if the workers cannot meet them then they get verbally and physically abused, like slapping,” Akter said

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Shampa Sonya, 19, who had been working in the doomed factory for 5 years. She lost her husband in the April 24 collapse, and is three months pregnant with no income.

Shampa Sonya, 19, had been working at Rana Plaza for 5 years. A regular paycheck was the only inspiration for her to work in conditions she described as inhumane. Ambitious production targets promised by the factory owners meant that she would start at 8am and finish at 10pm with just an hour’s break in between for lunch. “They wouldn’t even let you go to the toilet unless you had a toilet card, which you had to get from your supervisor, you would get into trouble if you went without one and they would cut your overtime pay if you spent more than five minutes.”

Poor conditions are expected to be tolerated, Sonya said. “The fans were useless and too far away and if we opened the windows all our threads and fabric would fly away, we just dealt with it and got used to it.”

She added: “When the foreign buyers would visit us, there was a totally different atmosphere: they treated us like family, made less people come in to work and targets were much less that day.”

Ferdous Perves Bivon, director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said it had been lobbying the government since 2003 to improve workplaces.

“If they had listened then all these accidents would not have happened,” Bivon said.

Both Sonya and her husband worked on the same floor of Rana Plaza, stitching jeans. On the day of the collapse, her husband told her to stay at home while he checked on the safety of the building. He never came back.

Now three months pregnant with no work, her husband’s family have taken the compensation money and thrown her out and her mother cannot afford to keep her. 

Related:

PhotoBlog: Ever present danger looms for Bangladeshi workers

PhotoBlog: Bangladesh honors building collapse victims as search for bodies ends

This story was originally published on Sun May 26, 2013 4:43 AM EDT

Andrew Biraj / Reuters

A worker visits the burned-out Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh, where 112 people died in November.

As many of the world’s largest clothing labels signed a pact earlier this month to try to bring safer working conditions to the Bangladeshi garment industry, factory owners in the country were on the defensive, saying they were already struggling to comply with the labor standards Western companies demand while keeping prices at a level they will tolerate.

"Look, we make a particular brand of polo shirt, which they pay us $15 to make and they sell for $150. We only make five percent on that by the time we pay the bank, the workers and compliance costs," said Adnan Bhuiyan, who along with his father owns the major manufacturer MIB near Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital.

His comments came in the wake of the Apr. 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza, a complex housing five garment factories on the outskirts of Dhaka, collapsed and killed more than 1,100 people. Six months ago, a fire killed 112 people at Tazreen Fashions, also in the city’s garment district.

Despite those deadly accidents, Bhuiyan and other manufacturers were quick to defend their practices and the environment they provide for their workers, saying factories with a sweatshop ethos were just a few bad apples that shouldn’t be allowed to tarnish their image.

Ismail Ferdous / AP

A woman cries as she sticks a poster of a a family member on the wall of a school turned makeshift morgue for Rana Plaza victims.

Bhuiyan said MIB and other large companies with which he is familiar comply with international labor laws, but even for bigger companies, that isn’t easy.

“There is a tremendous pressure to maintain the minimum level of compliance,” he said. “You have to actually invest a lot of money, so with those costs not every factory can afford to maintain that level.”

The level could soon be raised significantly. Owners of some of the world’s top labels – Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Benetton, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Zara and others --  have signed an accord requiring such measures as worker-led safety committees and union access to factories. Others, including Gap Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., say they have stepped up their own monitoring of working conditions in Bangladesh.

Some manufacturers, however, said that despite Western clothing companies’ talk of ethics and working conditions, the low cost of Bangladeshi clothing is attractive, so the orders are likely to keep coming in.

“What Bangladesh is providing is the highest craftsmanship with the lowest price tag, so I don’t think the buyers will go to another place to make their clothes,” said Bhuiyan. 

Other factory owners, however, are on edge. Among them is a man who owns one of the country’s largest garment companies.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he said he was concerned that he and his peers were being watched more closely and that they would lose business.

“This is not a good time,” he said. “Nobody wants to talk about this at the moment. Everybody is going through very a tough time now.”

Sohail, another factory owner who only gave his first name for fear of losing Western orders, said Bangladeshi factories and their workers, who typically make about $51 a month, are happy to provide the goods that have made the country’s garment industry so critical to the Bangladeshi economy.

Last year, 5,400 factories employing 4 million workers made 1.3 billion articles of clothing for export, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. That clothing, worth more than $19 billion, accounted for 79 percent of the country's total exports.

If Western companies demand significant improvements in working conditions without being willing to pay more, he said, Bangladesh will suffer.

“Before, Vietnam dominated the market with low costs, then Indonesia, and now it is Bangladesh,” he said. “It is a lifeline for us, and we can’t afford to lose this.”

Related:

• Bangladesh factories geared to produce tragedy
• Woman survives 16 days in Rana Plaza rubble
• PhotoBlog: Ever-present danger for Bangladeshi workers

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- Cyclone Mahasen struck the southern coast of Bangladesh on Thursday, lashing remote fishing villages with heavy rain and fierce winds that flattened mud and straw huts and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million people.

The main section of the storm reached land Thursday and immediately began weakening, according to Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. However, its forward movement was also slowing, meaning that towns in its path would have to weather the storm for longer, he said.

Even before the brunt of the storm hit, at least 18 deaths related to Mahasen were reported in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had said Wednesday that depending on its trajectory, the storm could bring life-threatening conditions to about 8.2 million people in Bangladesh, Myanmar and northeast India. But the storm appeared to spare at least some areas once thought to be at risk.

In the seafront resort town of Cox's Bazar, tens of thousands of people had fled shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, hotels, schools and government office buildings. But by Thursday afternoon, the sun was shining and local government administrator Ruhul Amin said he planned to close the shelters by that evening.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Bangladeshi pedestrians gather to watch the sea at a beach while Cyclone Mahasen heads toward landfall in Chittagong on Thursday.

"Thank God we have been spared this time," Amin said.

Mahasen hit land with maximum wind speeds of about 62 mph and quickly weakened to 56 mph, said Alam, the meteorological official.

Along Myanmar's western coast, danger was particularly high for tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people living in plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds in dozens of refugee camps.

Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP

An internally displaced Rohingya man pushes a rickshaw with children and belongings leaving a camp for displaced Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, in Myanmar on Thursday. Members of the displaced minority started moving to safer shelters ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mahasen.

Driven from their homes by violence, some members of the Muslim minority group refused to follow evacuation orders. Many distrust officials in the majority-Buddhist country, where Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination.

U.N. officials, hoping they would inspire greater trust, fanned out across the area to encourage people to leave. They said Thursday that more than 35,000 people had been relocated.

In Bangladesh, river ferries and boat service were suspended, and scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed. The military said it was keeping 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.

"We have seen such a disaster before," said Mohammad Abu Taleb, who shut down his convenience shop in Cox's Bazar, a city of 200,000. "It's better to stay home. I'm not taking any chance."

A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Myanmar's southern delta was devastated Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people. Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Cyclone Mahasen, which is rated Category 1 — the weakest level.

Heavy rain and storm surge could prove deadlier than the wind. Bangladesh's meteorological office said the cyclone was moving so slowly it may take a whole day for it to pass the Bangladesh coast.

Palash Khan / AP

A woman holds a photo of her son, who had been missing since the April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza near Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on Friday. The collapse of the building, which housed garment factories, did not come as a shock to everyone.

Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

While Bangladeshis had a moment of joy Friday when one woman was pulled alive from the garment factory that collapsed, killing  more than 1,000, many fear a similar incident could easily happen again.

Working conditions are poor and regulations are routinely overlooked in Bangladesh, where standard wages can be as little as $51 per month. The tragedy at the Rana Plaza on the outskirts of Dhaka came exactly five months after another garment factory caught fire, killing 112 workers. And as recently as Thursday, eight people were killed when a fire swept through another clothing factory in the same city of Dhaka.  

Juel Nurrunabi worked at Rana Plaza for about 18 months. He was trapped in the rubble for six hours after the April 24 disaster. 

Despite suffering head and leg injuries, Nurrunabi said he survived because he was standing next to a pillar and counts himself as lucky.

“I heard a massive crumbling noise and then within around 10 seconds it was over,” he recalled. “We didn’t even have time to think or run.”

Andrew Biraj / Reuters

People try to rescue garment workers trapped under rubble at Rana Plaza after its April 24 collapse.

As a textile engineer, Nurrunabi had it better than most, he said.

Even then, conditions weren’t ideal, and he had recently complained about long hours, outdated equipment and a lack of air conditioning. The bosses said things would get better, but they didn’t, he said.

“The workers who stitched the clothes would never dare to ask the boss for better conditions. … They would be out that day,” Nurrunabi said. “We were all far too busy to worry about health and safety. That was for other people to think about.”

Garment-factory owners who had dealings with companies in the building were among those who had seen problems at Rana Plaza.

But Sohail, a manufacturer who did not want his last name used because he said it might cost him orders from foreign companies, said he "never really felt scared" while in the doomed site.

"There are hundreds of buildings like this across Dhaka," he said. "It’s quite normal. I have visited many garment factories where the building just doesn’t look right."

Sohail said he regularly went to Rana Plaza to buy stock left over from large foreign orders. “We knew the building had structural problems for the last six months,” he said.

Health and safety regulations for workers in the country’s $20-billion-a-year garment industry are widely known to be lax, despite requirements by U.S. and European clothing companies that their suppliers adhere to international labor laws at a minimum.

“These international companies want us to strictly implement these compliance features, which we are happy to do, but at the same time they want us to charge less for our making costs,” Sohail said. “A lot of manufacturers are struggling to come out on top.”

Andrew Biraj / Reuters

Workers who survived the Rana Plaza collapse are treated at a hospital in Savar. Aroti Das, left, was rescued from the rubble two days after the building collapsed. Aroti said she earned 4,500 Taka ($56.25) per month. "The workers who stitched the clothes would never dare to ask the boss for better conditions," she added.

Among the costly items that he said companies struggle with are the provision of air conditioning and filtered drinking water, and the hiring of safety officers and medical staff.

Some compliance measures are inexpensive, including regular breaks and limits on the number of workers on a factory floor, but they can lead to missed deadlines in fulfilling orders, Sohail said.

“If you don’t deliver on time, there is a fine and the company’s reputation is at stake,” he said. “The pressure of reaching deadlines inevitably means that some firms will subcontract to non-compliant factories to finish off orders.”

Sohail said his knowledge of health and safety requirements and frequent visits to Rana Plaza led him to the conclusion that factories there were pushed beyond their limits.

“Each floor was overcrowded,” he said. “There were maybe 800 workers on each when there should have been around 600. There were few windows, and the entry and exits points to each floor were on the same side, so it was one way in and the same way out. God knows what would have happened if there was fire.”

Ismail Ferdous / AP

A clothes tag lies in the rubble Saturday of Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh. More than 800 bodies been pulled from the site where the eight-story building collapsed.

Compounding the problem is that Bangladeshi workers don’t tend to ask for better conditions, Sohail and others said.

In a country where income from land usage has significantly declined, working for the booming garment industry is not only a way of making a living but is also considered respectable employment, particularly for women. Many of them come from rural areas where there is little or no opportunity to earn.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to the United Nations, observed in his 2005 book “The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime” that garment workers were just grateful for the work.

It was a way out of dire poverty and a step up the financial ladder, he said. Despite factory women acknowledging the tough, almost inhumane conditions in which they worked, Sachs noted: “What was most striking and unexpected about these stories was the repeated affirmation that this work was the greatest opportunity that these women could ever have imagined.”

Bangladesh earns nearly $20 billion a year from exports of the garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe, and the industry provides jobs for about 4 million workers.

The country’s clothing factory trade association, whose headquarters was pelted with rocks by angry survivors in the days after last month’s disaster, fears a global backlash against Bangladeshi garments would cause more poverty.

Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, told reporters last week: “It's not the time to turn away from us. That will hurt the industry and many of the workers will lose jobs.

“It's a crucial time for us. We are doing our best to improve the safety measures in the factories. We expect our buyers to bear with us and help us to overcome the current crisis.”

Moufaq Karul, who runs a garment manufacturing firm and had frequent dealings at Rana Plaza, added: “Garment workers are not bothered whether there is adequate health and safety in a factory. All they are interested in is the income. The majority of them are women, and most of them are sole breadwinners for their families.”

Karul corroborated Sohail’s observations of the ill-fated Rana Plaza, saying there was barely space to walk but that this was not a cause for protest by the workers.

“Workers don’t even think of compliance factors as a right,” Karul said.

NBC News' John Newland contributed to this report.

Related:

• Woman who survived 16 days in collapsed building: 'Never dreamed I'd see the daylight'
• PhotoBlog: Ever-present danger looms for Bangladeshi workers
• From Baby Jessica to the Chilean miners, miracle survivals and escapes
• Complete coverage of Bangladesh building collapse

The remarkable story of a survivor pulled alive from the ruins of a factory in Bangladesh more than two weeks after it collapsed, killing more than 1,000 people, captured the world's attention. Here are some other notable recent miraculous survivals and escapes that were celebrated around the globe:

Baby Jessica: 18-month-old Jessica McClure was heard singing nursery rhymes at one point during her nearly 59 hours of being stuck inside a well, 22 feet below ground-level. It was Oct. 16, 1987, and the toddler had fallen into the abandoned well shaft in her aunt's Midland, Texas, backyard while playing with other kids. Rescuers and reporters surrounded the scene, but tension was rising about whether the little girl, whose leg had become wedged in a narrow crevice on her fall down, would survive. Rescuers ultimately chose to drill a tunnel parallel to the well and connect a shaft through solid rock to rescue her. Baby Jessica later had to have 15 surgeries in the years following her ordeal, including the removal of her small toe and part of her right foot, but is now living a healthy life and is a mother herself.

Eric Gay / AP

Eighteen-month old Jessica McClure is held by rescue worker Steven Forbes on Oct. 16, 1987 after she was trapped 22 feet under ground in an abandoned water well since Wednesday morning.

The Chilean miners: Thirty-three copper miners working in Copiapo, Chile, became trapped when the shaft they were working in collapsed on Aug. 5, 2010. They were a half-mile underground for 69 days as rescuers desperately tried to find a way to reach them without letting the constantly-shifting mountain bury them forever. Before anyone knew they had survived the collapse, the group survived on a meager emergency supply of tuna fish and outdated milk; for the rest of the rescue, they were given food, medication (including anti-depressants), and letters from relatives through the shaft. After a drill finally broke through to their hot, wet, underground purgatory, they were pulled out on live television. They were trapped longer than any other miners in history, according to The Associated Press.

Alex Ibanez / Chilean Presidency via Reuters

The last miner to be rescued, Luis Urzua, who is credited with organizing the miners to ration food and save themselves, gestures next to Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, right, at the end of the rescue operation at San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile, on Oct. 13, 2010.

Gretel Daugherty / Getty Images

Aron Ralston smiles at a news conference at St. Mary's Hospital on May 9, 2003 in Grand Junction, Colo.

The climber who cut his own arm off: Amputating his right arm isn't what mountaineer Aron Ralston had in mind when he set out for an adventure on April 26, 2003. A prolific climber based in Aspen, Colo., Ralston, then 27, had scaled many of Colorado's highest peaks when he decided to go for a solo climb in the middle of the night with no cell phone in Blue John Canyon in Utah. The backcountry terrain was tough, but Ralston persevered — until an 800-pound boulder rolled onto his onto his right hand. He was trapped. Five days of waiting for a rescue crew to spot him, he realized he had run out of water, and needed to do something drastic. With his pocketknife, he amputated his arm below the elbow, then made a makeshift tourniquet, and hiked five miles on a trail until he was spotted by a helicopter search team. He now has a prosthetic arm. His story was later told in a book and a movie.

Haiti quake survivor: Darlene Etienne was 16 when the Haiti's devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck on Jan. 12, 2010, killing 220,000. Etienne survived, but she was buried in the capital city, Port-au-Prince, by concrete and twisted steel — and she wasn't found for 15 days. On Jan. 27, 2010, a French rescue team heard her weakly calling out through the debris, and she was rescued. She told her rescuers that she believed that if she had gone even a few more hours, she wouldn't have survived. A year later, she reported that she was completely healthy, living with extended family in a rural area three hours from the capital.

Jerome Sales / French Army via AP

French medical staff tend Haitian girl Darlene Etienne aboard the French medical ship Siroco, off Port au Prince, on Jan. 27, 2010, after she was pulled from the rubble in a stunning rescue 15 days after an earthquake.

Miracle baby of the China quake: A huge 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan province in China on May 12, 2008, killing more than 70,000 people and leaving even more homeless. But out of all the terrible news, there was one bright spot: A 30-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant and buried under eight feet of concrete was found after 50 hours. A month later, she gave birth to a healthy, 8.7-pound child.

A mother who was pulled alive from the ruins of an eight-story factory in Bangladesh admitted Friday that she "never dreamed I'd see the daylight again" after more than 16 days in the rubble.

Reshma Begum, a seamstress who is married with a young son, was found trapped in a mosque in the building's basement after about 391 hours.

AFP - Getty Images

A woman who survived more than 16 days in the rubble of a collapsed factory building in Bangladesh was rescued on Friday.

"I heard voices of the rescue workers for the past several days," Begum told private Somoy TV station from her hospital bed. "I kept hitting the wreckage with sticks and rods just to attract their attention. No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I'd see the daylight again."

She added: "There was some dried food around me. I ate the dried food for 15 days. The last two days I had nothing but water. I used to drink only a limited quantity of water to save it. I had some bottles of water around me." 

The April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza complex, about 20 miles northwest of Dhaka, was the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, Reuters reported. The death toll reached at least 1,038 on Friday.

One expert rescuer said he had never heard of someone surviving for so long in a collapsed building, saying it was "incredible" Begum was still alive.

Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper said the first sign there was a survivor came when a rescuer heard groans coming from the basement at about 3:15 p.m. local time on Friday (5:15 a.m. ET). 

A senior rescue official said Begum was first spotted by a 15-year-old volunteer helping at the site called Monowar. 

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

The factory building -- once eight-stories high -- is now almost at ground level.

Bangladesh’s Independent newspaper quoted a rescuer who told local television that "as we were clearing rubble, we called out if anyone was alive."

"Then we heard her saying, 'please save me, please save me.' Since then she has been talking to us," he added.

She was given water and food as rescuers tried to reach her, the Star newspaper said, and she was freed just over an hour later.

Local television showed the young woman, who was wearing a purple dress, being carried from the rubble to an ambulance that took her to a military hospital.

The rescue official said she was dehydrated but able to walk, and Moazzem Hossain, an army major, also told the Star that she was in "good health." 

Ray Gray, who spent 22 years as a rescuer at many of the world’s major earthquakes, said it was “incredible” that she was still alive after more than 16 days.

“She’s a very, very lucky lady,” he said. “It’s certainly the longest I’ve heard of.”

Gray, who recently retired from working with the Scotland-based International Rescue Corps, said without access to water most people would be dead within a week.

He said the longest rescue he was involved in personally was of a woman in the city of Duzce, Turkey, who was trapped for four or five days after an earthquake in 1999. A closet fell on top of her and protected her from her house, which collapsed in the quake. She survived despite having no water or food.

The disaster, believed to have been triggered when generators were started up during a blackout, has put the spotlight on Western retailers who use the impoverished South Asian nation as a source of cheap goods.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• From Baby Jessica to the Chilean miners, miracle survivals and escapes
• PhotoBlog: Ever-present danger for Bangladeshi workers
• Pope condemns 'slave labor' conditions in collapsed Bangladesh factory

This story was originally published on Fri May 10, 2013 6:42 AM EDT

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Eight people were killed when a fire swept through a clothing factory in Bangladesh, police and an industry association official said on Thursday, as the death toll from the collapse of another factory building two weeks ago climbed above 900.

The fire, in an industrial district of Dhaka, comes amid global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh's booming garment industry following the catastrophic collapse of Rana Plaza, on the outskirts of the city, in the world's deadliest industrial accident since the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984.

"It is not clear to us how the accident happened, but we are trying to find out the cause," Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), told Reuters.

On Wednesday the Bangladesh government said it had shut down 18 garment factories for safety reasons following the April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza, which housed five garment factories making clothes for Western brands. Six were cleared to reopen on Thursday after inspectors issued safety certificates.

Salvage teams were still pulling bodies from the rubble of the Rana Plaza complex in Savar, around 20 miles northwest of Dhaka, and on Thursday a spokesman at the army control room coordinating the operation said the number of people confirmed to have been killed had reached 912.

Roughly 2,500 people were rescued from the building, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.

The government has blamed the owners and builders of the eight-storey complex for using shoddy building materials, including substandard rods, bricks and cement, and not obtaining the necessary clearances.

Bangladesh's garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the poor South Asian country's exports, has seen a series of deadly accidents, including a fire in November that killed 112 people.

The latest fire, in an 11-story building in the Mirpur industrial district, broke out at a factory belonging to the Tung Hai Group, a large garment exporter.

"The factory was closed and all the workers had left the premises an hour earlier," said fire service official Bhazan Sarker.

A fire service official and BGMEA president Islam said the Bangladeshi managing director of the company and a senior police officer were among the dead. The others killed were friends and personal staff of the factory boss, officials said.

Tung Hai Group says on its website that it has more than 1,000 employees and its customers include major Western retailers including Britain's Primark, and Inditex Group of Spain. It makes products including cardigans, jumpers and pyjamas.

A spokesman for Inditex said it had last placed an order with the factory in 2011. "But then we stopped ordering because the factory did not meet the standards we demand from our providers", he said.

Related:

PhotoBlog: Ever-present danger for Bangladeshi workers

EU considers trade action after factory collapse

Rescue workers give up search for survivors in collapse

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Garment workers who were employed in the factory that collapsed wait in line to claim their pay Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — The death toll from a garment factory building that collapsed outside the Bangladesh capital has climbed past 900, as recovery workers continue pulling bodies from the wreckage more than two weeks after the disaster.

Officials say 912 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of the fallen eight-story building as of Thursday morning.

An army official says 100 badly decomposing bodies being kept at a makeshift morgue near the building site in a Dhaka suburb will be sent to hospitals for DNA testing.

It is not clear what the final toll will be from the disaster, already the world's deadliest garment industry disaster and one of the worst industrial accidents.

More than 2,500 people were rescued alive after the April 24 accident. An unknown number of people were inside.

The Associated Press

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- At least 20 people were killed Sunday and Monday in clashes in Bangladesh between police and hard-line Islamists demanding new laws that critics say would amount to the "Talibanization" of a country that maintains secularism as state policy.

Clashes began on Sunday after about 200,000 Islamist supporters marched toward Dhaka, the capital, to press their demands and were met by lines of police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

AFP - Getty Images

Islamist protesters throw bricks and stones toward Bangladeshi police during clashes outside Dhaka on Monday. Since Sunday, at least 20 people have died as the hard-liners demand laws based on religion.

On Monday, hundreds of protesters, many wearing white Muslim skull caps and throwing stones, regrouped and police again fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse them.

Violence spread from the capital, where at least 13 died. Five people were killed in Chittagong and another two in Bagerhat.

Protesters set fire to vehicles, including two police cars, and stormed a police post on the outskirts of the capital, police said.

Two policemen and a member of a paramilitary force were among the people killed on Monday, said police official Shah Mohammad Manzur Kader. Four people were killed on Sunday, and hundreds have been injured, hospital officials said.

The protests are led by a group called Hefajat-e-Islam, which set a May 5 deadline for the government to introduce a new blasphemy law, reinstate pledges to Allah in the constitution, ban women from mixing freely with men and make Islamic education mandatory.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Islamist protesters gather Sunday on a highway at an entry point to the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, as they try to enforce a siege in demand of religious laws. The country has a secular government.

The government of the overwhelmingly Muslim country has rejected the demands.

The clash of ideologies could plunge Bangladesh into a cycle of violence as the two main political parties, locked in decades of mutual distrust, exploit the tension between secularists and Islamists ahead of elections that are due by next January.

Bangladesh has been rocked by protests and counter-protests since January, when a tribunal set up by the government to investigate abuses during a 1971 war of independence from Pakistan sentenced to death in absentia a leader of the main Muslim party, the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Jamaat opposed Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan in the war but denies accusations that some of its leaders committed murder, rape and torture during the conflict.

The Hefajat-e-Islam emerged from the protests over the tribunal.

More than 100 people have been killed in the clashes this year, most of them Islamist party activists and members of the security forces.

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 8:54 AM EDT

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Two Western retailers have promised to compensate families of garment workers killed while making their clothes in a Bangladesh factory building that collapsed last week in the country's worst industrial accident.

The pledge from Britain's Primark and Canada's Loblaw came after the owner of the collapsed Rana Plaza was brought before a court in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday, where lawyers and protesters chanted "hang him, hang him."

At least 385 people were killed in the disaster, the latest incident to raise serious questions about worker safety and low wages in the poor South Asian country that relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports.

With almost no hope left of finding further survivors, heavy machinery has been brought in to start clearing the mass of concrete and debris from the site in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 20 miles from Dhaka.

Eight people have been arrested: four factory bosses, two engineers, building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana, and his father, Abdul Khalek.

Police are looking for a fifth factory boss, Spanish citizen David Mayor, although it was unclear whether he was in Bangladesh at the time of the accident.

There were angry scenes as Rana, a local leader of the ruling Awami League's youth front, was led into court on Monday wearing a helmet and protective police jacket, witnesses said.

"Put the killer on the gallows. He is not worth any mercy or lenient penalty," one onlooker outside the court shouted.

Rana, who was arrested on Sunday by the elite Rapid Action Battalion while apparently trying to flee to India, was ordered to be held on remand for 15 days for interrogation.

Khalek, who officials said was named in documents as a legal owner of the Rana Plaza building, was arrested in Dhaka on Monday. Those being held face charges of faulty construction and causing unlawful death.

About 2,500 people have been rescued from the wrecked building, which housed several factories on the upper floors, but hundreds of the mostly female workers who are thought to have been inside remain unaccounted for.

Primark, which was supplied by one of the factories operating at Rana Plaza, said on Monday that it was working with a local nongovernmental organization to help victims of the disaster.

"Primark will pay compensation to the victims of this disaster who worked for its supplier," said the company, owned by Associated British Foods. "This will include the provision of long-term aid for children who have lost parents, financial aid for those injured and payments to the families of the deceased."

Loblaw Companies Ltd., which had some of its Joe Fresh clothing line manufactured at Rana Plaza, said it too was offering compensation.

"We are working to ensure that we will deliver support in the best and most meaningful way possible, and with the goal of ensuring that victims and their families receive benefits now and in the future," said spokeswoman Julija Hunter in an email.

The International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, said it was sending a high-level mission to Bangladesh in the coming days.

"Horror and regret must translate into firm action," said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement. "Action now can prevent further tragedy." 

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