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DHAKA, (MANEND NEWS): At least 34 people have died after a fire that sparked a huge chemical explosion and was still blazing on Sunday at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh.
The toll was expected to rise with over 300 people injured, some of them seriously, and eyewitnesses said they had seen unrecovered bodies in the facility near the major southern port of Chittagong.
Several hundred rescuers were battling the blaze that broke out late on Saturday in Sitakunda, about 40km (25 miles) from Chittagong, when a number of containers holding chemicals exploded, the fire brigade told reporters.
“The death toll from the fire has risen to 34,” Elias Chowdhury, the chief doctor of the region, told AFP as firefighters continued to battle the blaze. “More than 300 people are injured.
“These people – including several journalists who were doing Facebook lives – are still not accounted for.”
“There are still some bodies inside the fire-affected places. I saw eight or 10 bodies,” one volunteer told reporters.
The injured include at least 40 firefighters and 10 police officers, the Chittagong regional police chief, Anwar Hossain, told AFP. At least five firefighters were among those killed.
“The number of fatalities is expected to rise as some of the injured are in critical condition,” Hossain said.
Chowdhury said the injured had been rushed to different hospitals in the region as doctors were brought back from holiday to help in the emergency.
He said the number of fatalities could still grow as some 20 people remained in critical condition with burns covering 60-90% of their bodies.
Local media put the number of injuries at about 300, and requests for blood donations for the injured flooded social media.
Emergency crews were still working to put out the fire Sunday morning and military clinics were helping to treat the injured.
Mominur Rahman, the chief administrator of Chittagong district, said while the fire was largely under control, there were “still several pockets of fire in the depot”.
“Firefighters are trying to control these pocket fires,” he said.
Rahman said the depot contained millions of dollars of garment products waiting to be exported to Western retailers, for whom Bangladesh is a key supplier.
Ruhul Amin Sikder, spokesman for the Bangladesh Inland Container Association (BICA), said some of the containers at the 30-acre private depot contained chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide.
The director of the BM container depot, Mujibur Rahman, said the fire’s cause was still unknown. He added the facility employs about 600 people.
In 2020, three workers were killed after an oil tank exploded in another container depot in the neighbouring Patenga area.
Fires are common in Bangladesh due to lax enforcement of safety rules. In July 2021, 54 people died when a blaze ripped through a food-processing factory outside the capital Dhaka.
In 2020, 70 people were killed when another fire engulfed several Dhaka apartment blocks.