THE death toll in the Bismillah Building tragedy has risen to a staggering 127.
During the 22-hour hazardous operation in which the rescuers had also to battle with the smell of death, 37 more bodies and one survivor were extracted. ... There was very little chance of any trapped persons surviving for nearly 42 hours under ... 10,000 maunds of concrete [but] the rescuers were not willing to give up hopes of saving a life and were still going about very cautiously. Because of the narrow lanes and approach roads, engineers had to be content with just one ... crane ... to remove the debris. Staff reporter [As per a related news agency report,] Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto .
expressed his deep shocl( and grief over the loss of life in the collapse of the ... building, and declared that those responsible for the tragedy ‘will not go unpunished’. In a condolence message ... the Prime Minister said ‘it is without doubt one of the most serious tragedies of this kind and my heart goes out to the victims and their families’. [He] said he had asl(ed the Sind Chief Minister to ‘devote all his resources to assist the victims of this ghastly tragedy’