Mass funeral held as collapse death toll hits 410

 BANGLADESH (AP):

Dozens of Bangladeshi garment workers, their bodies too battered or decomposed to be identified, were buried in a mass funeral yesterday, a week after the eight-story building they worked in toppled down, killing at least 410 people and injuring thousands.

Hundreds attended the traditional Muslim funeral and many more looked on from the roofs of nearby buildings as the bodies, rotting in the spring heat, were brought to the graveyard on the back of flatbed trucks.

Onlookers covered their noses. One woman rushed through the crowd to the back of a truck wailing that one of the bodies was her sister's. She begged to take it as family members held on to her to keep her from collapsing.

Five garment factories were housed in the illegally constructed Rana Plaza building that collapsed April 24, five months after a fire killed 112 people at another clothing factory. The tragedies exposed the unsafe conditions plaguing Bangladesh's $20 billion-a-year garment industry, which supplies many European and American retailers.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was shocked by a headline about the building collapse that said some of the workers were living on €38 a month.

"This was the payment of these people who have died ... and this is called 'slave labour,'" he said. Vatican Radio said the Pope made the remarks during a private Mass at the Vatican.