No fewer than 49 people have been confirmed dead so far and hundreds injured after a fire sparked a huge chemical explosion at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, officials confirmed on Monday.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that the toll is expected to rise further, with some of the more than 300 people injured in serious condition, officials said, while volunteers reported that there were more bodies inside the smouldering, wreckage-strewn facility.
It was earlier reported that the fire started late on Saturday at the depot in Sitakunda, which stores around 4,000 containers, many of them filled with garments destined for Western retailers. The facility is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the major southern port of Chittagong.
Following the fire, containers holding chemicals exploded, engulfing firefighters, volunteers and journalists in an inferno, hurtling people and debris through the air, and turning the night sky a blazing orange.
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Buildings located kilometres away rattled with the force of the blast.
Elias Chowdhury who is the regional chief doctor told reporters that the number of dead was 49 but would increase. Firefighters continued to douse pockets of fire with hoses on Sunday.
‘The death toll will rise as the rescue work has not been completed yet,” Chowdhury said.
‘These people including several journalists who were doing Facebook lives are still not accounted for.’
Reazul Karim, operations director of the fire department, said that at least seven firefighters died and that at least four others were missing.
‘Never in our fire department history have we lost so many firefighters in a single incident,’ Bharat Chandra, a former senior firefighter, told reporters.
‘There are still some bodies inside the fire-affected places. I saw eight or 10 bodies,” one volunteer told reporters.
Mujibur Rahman, the director of B.M. Container Depot, the firm operating the facility with around 600 workers, said that the cause of the initial fire was still unknown.
The container depot held hydrogen peroxide, fire service chief Brigadier General Main Uddin told reporters.
