In a startling story of survival, a woman has been pulled alive from the rubble of a factory collapse in Bangladesh which claimed the lives of over 1,000 people.

The survivor, Reshma Begum clung to life by eating biscuits scrounged from the backpacks of her dead colleagues who lay nearby. Reshma, a seamstress who worked on the third floor of the factory breathed through a pipe, which she used to alert rescuers to her presence by hitting it against concrete.

This, from Al Jazeera:

Bangladeshi rescuers have found a woman survivor in the rubble of a garment factory complex which collapsed and killed more than 1,000 people on April 24, the country’s fire service chief told AFP news agency.

One of the rescuers said that the woman had cried out for help as recovery teams sifted through the wreckage more than 16 days after the nine-storey Rana Plaza complex collapsed on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.

“As we were clearing rubble, we called out if anyone was alive,” the unnamed rescuer told the private Somoy TV channel.

More than 2,500 people were rescued in the immediate aftermath of the building collapse.

[Source : YouTube]