Gallery: 48 hours after Bangladesh garment factory collapse

Garment workers trapped in the rubble plead for help. Rescuers, some in hardhats and others wearing slippers, dig through the broken concrete. They fashion bolts of colorful cloth into makeshift stretchers to lift and carry hurt survivors and dead victims.

Thousands of relatives wail their grief and worry outside a collapsed building in Savar, Bangladesh, where more than 300 people were killed and 2,200 rescued.

Several hundreds of garment factory workers have taken to the streets to protest the collapse and poor safety standards.

It is the worst-ever disaster in Bangladesh’s $20 billion-a-year garment industry, which supplies global retailers but is notorious for its poor safety record.

Here are some images from the scene:

A Bangladeshi woman shows a portrait of her missing twin sister, believed trapped in the rubble. (Getty Images). Getty Images

Bangladeshi army personal seal off an area after relatives of the missing and dead burst into angry protests at the disaster site of an eight-storey building that collapsed 48 hours earlier in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, on April 26, 2013. (Getty Images). Getty Images

Bangladeshi army personal speak on a megaphone after relatives of the missing and dead burst into angry protests. (Getty Images). Getty Images

Bangladeshi police fire tear gas after relatives of the missing and dead burst into angry protests at the disaster site on the outskirts of Dhaka, on April 26, 2013. (Getty Images). Getty Images

“We want to go inside the building and find our people now. They will die if we don’t find them soon,” said Shahinur Rahman, whose mother is missing.

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An army rescue worker, Maj. Abdul Latif, said he found one survivor still trapped under concrete slabs, surrounded by several bodies. At another place in the building, four survivors were found pinned under the debris, a fire official said.

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The rescue workers said they were proceeding very cautiously inside the crumbling building, using their hands, hammers and shovels, to avoid more injuries to trapped survivors and avoid further collapses.

READ MORE: Death toll from collapsed Bangladesh building passes 300

Police say cracks in the building had led them to order an evacuation of the building the day before it fell, but the factories ignored the order.

A military official, Maj.-Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, told reporters that search and rescue operations would continue until at least Saturday.

“We know a human being can survive for up to 72 hours in this situation. So our efforts will continue non-stop,” he said.

Bangladesh’s garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy. It has grown rapidly in the past decade, a boom fuelled by Bangladesh’s exceptionally low labour costs. The country’s minimum wage is now the equivalent of about $38 a month.