The Ashulia garments fire tragedy

[Banglatiger84]

Sad news: More than 100 killed in a fire in an Ashulia garments factory yesterday evening



Dhaka: At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-storey garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said on Sunday.
Major Mahbub, who uses only one name, said among those those are "several who jumped to their death. Most bodies were found on the second floor. Most died of suffocation."

The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.

The blaze broke out at the seven-storey factory operated by Tazreen Fashions late on Saturday.

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Army soldiers and border guards had been deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene.

Survivors told how panicked staff, mostly women, desperately tried to escape the blazing building.

"There were more than 1,000 workers trapped in the factory," one worker who gave her name only as Romesa, 42, told local media from her hospital bed.

"I jumped from a window on the fourth floor and found myself on the third-story roof of another building. Several people fell out of the window and died."

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion (Dh73.4 billion) from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.