Dhaka : An eight storied building collapsed in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Wednesday, killing at least 82 and trapping many more, reports said.

The commercial building at the Rana Plaza building in Savar that caved in today morning, housed many garment factories, a bank and other shops.

Only the ground floor of the Rana Plaza in the Savar district, which also housed a garment factory, remained intact, said the officials.

Hiralal Roy, a senior emergency ward doctor at the nearby Enam hospital where victims are being taken, told a news agency that the death toll was 82 and at least 700 injured people had been treated at the hospital.

“The toll will rise as conditions of some injured were critical ” he told a news agency.

Firefighters and Army troopers rushed to the site for rescue operations. Over 500 people were injured and sent to hospitals, said a senior army officer, supervising the rescue campaign.

The reason behind the collapse is not out yet, however a crack had been detected in the building on Tuesday, said reports.

Some workers complained that the detection of cracks triggered an evacuation, but they had been forced back to the production lines by their managers.

“The managers forced us to rejoin and just one hour after we entered the factory the building collapsed with a huge noise,” said a 24-year-old worker who gave her first name as Mousumi.

Television footage showed rescue workers dropping water bottles and dry food to the basements of the building where people were trapped.

Bangladesh is notorious for building collapses and illegal multi-storied constructions.

Bangladesh witnessed the last major building collapse in 2005 when over 70 people were killed after a multi—storey garment factory collapsed in the same area.

Also in November last year, at least 110 were suffocated to death when a garment factory near Dhaka caught fire.