DHAKA: Six people were killed Wednesday when fire swept through a clothing factory outside Dhaka, police said, just the latest fatal industrial accident to hit Bangladesh’s $30 billion garment industry.
Firefighters recovered the bodies of five men and a woman from the top floor of a factory in Muktarpur, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Dhaka, where it appeared they were trapped by the blaze.
“So far we have found six bodies. The search is ongoing,” Mustafizur Rahman, deputy district police chief, told AFP.
Police said welders could have sparked the fire, which started in a chemicals storage room inside the four-story factory.
Fires are common in Bangladeshi clothing factories, despite efforts by the government and international buyers to improve notoriously poor working conditions.
In July a fire triggered by a boiler explosion killed 13 people and injured 50 more at a factory in Gazipur, an industrial district just north of the capital Dhaka.
Last September, nearly 40 people were killed and 70 injured after a huge fire swept a packaging factory in the same district.
In April 2013, the nine-story Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in one of the worst industrial disasters in recent times.
Bangladesh has more than 4,500 garment factories, employing four million mostly female workers. The sector accounts for 80 percent of Bangladesh’s more than $35 billion exports last year.
Fire kills six people in Bangladesh clothing factory
Fire kills six people in Bangladesh clothing factory
Swedish PM rejects Trump’s tariffs threat over Greenland
- “We won’t let ourselves be intimidated,” Kristersson said
- “Only Denmark and Greenland decide questions that concern them”
STOCKHOLM: Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Saturday rejected US President Donald Trump’s threat to European nations of swingeing tariffs if they did not let him acquire Greenland.
“We won’t let ourselves be intimidated,” he said in a message sent to AFP. “Only Denmark and Greenland decide questions that concern them.
“I will always defend my country and our allied neighbors,” he added, stressing that this was “a European question.
“Sweden is currently having intensive discussions with other EU countries, Norway and the United Kingdom to find a joint response,” he added.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday escalated his quest to acquire Greenland, threatening multiple European nations with tariffs of up to 25 percent until his purchase of the Danish territory is achieved.
His threats came as thousands of people protested in the capital of Greenland against his wish to acquire the mineral-rich island at the gateway to the Arctic.
Thousands more protested in Copenhagen and other Danish cities.
