L
LequteMan
Guest
At least nine people have been killed and about 50 injured when a fire swept through a clothing factory late on Tuesday in Gazipur, an area near the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but reports said it broke out at a knitting section of Aswad Composite Mills.
A man who came to find his uncle however told BBC NEWS that the fire started from a textile machine. "When the silencer of the machine exploded, the fire spread and the factory caught fire. Immediately after the fire many people ran out of the factory but a few could not get out." He said.
Factory Director Emdad Hossain, who sustained injuries while rushing out of the factory told the DAILY STAR in Bangladesh that 170 workers were on duty on the two floors when the fire broke out and that “almost all of them managed to come out of the building," he said.
Although most members of a reported workforce of 3,000 had left the building for the day, those killed are thought to have been working overtime
Reports quoted officials saying water shortages and a lack of nearby fire stations had allowed the blaze to escalate and continue for several hours.
Safety standards in Bangladesh's garment factories are notoriously poor - more than 1,100 people died in April when a factory outside Dhaka collapsed.
