Chemical explosion at port kills at least 34
CHITTAGONG: At least 34 people have died after a fire that sparked a huge chemical explosion and was still blazing yesterday at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, officials said.
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 40 kilometres 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, chief doctor of the region, said as firefighters continued to battle the blaze.
“More than 300 are hurt. These people — including several journalists who were doing Facebook lives — are still not accounted for.”
The injured include at least 40 firefighters and 10 police officers, Chittagong regional police chief Anwar Hossain said. At least five firefighters were among those killed.
The container depot held hydrogen peroxide, fire service chief Brigadier General Main Uddin told reporters. “We still could not control the fire because of the existence of this chemical,” he said.
Dr Chowdhury, the chief doctor in Chittagong, said the injured had been rushed to different hospitals in the region as doctors were brought back from holiday to help.
Mominur Rahman, chief administrator of Chittagong district, said the government has deployed some 200 army troops to prevent chemicals flowing into the sea. He added that the depot contained millions of dollars of garments waiting to be exported to Western retailers, for whom Bangladesh is a key supplier.
The director of the BM Container Depot, Mujibur Rahman, said the fire’s cause was still unknown.