The death toll from last week's building collapse on the outskirts of Dhaka climbed to 435 with the recovery of about a dozen bodies Thursday as rescuers continued to search for the missing.
Nine days into the Bangladesh's worst industrial tragedy, rescuers still believe there might have many more bodies in the wreckage of the collapsed building though they have no hopes of finding people alive.
"A total of 429 bodies have so far been pulled out of the collapsed building," Major General Chowdhury Hasan Sarwardi of Bangladesh Army's Nine Infantry Division told reporters at the disaster site.
He said they are now putting their efforts to pull out manually six more bodies which were spotted Thursday as the rescuers with cranes and other heavy equipment have been removing huge concrete slabs and chunks of debris.
"We'll never leave the accident site until recovery of the last body," said the leader of the entire rescue operations.
Of the bodies, he said 374 have so far been handed over to their relatives.
Rescuers in collaboration with thousands of volunteers and locals under the supervision of Bangladesh Army have been working without any break since April 24 morning when the building collapsed.
According to Chowdhury, the rescuers have pulled alive 2,437 people after the eight-storey building Rana Plaza crumbled like a pack of cards on April 24.
