Fire in Bangladesh garment factory - 7 dead

[Le Socialiste]

Disgusting.

At least seven people have been killed when a fire swept through a garment factory in an industrial district of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, police and an industry association official said.

Thursday’s fire, which broke out overnight in the Mirpur area, occurred two weeks after more than 800 people were killed in a factory collapse outside the city.

"It is not clear to us how the accident happened, but we are trying to find out the cause," Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, told Reuters.

The fire broke out at a factory belonging to the Tung Hai Group, a large garment exporter, after most workers had gone home, police said.

On Wednesday the Bangladesh government said it had shut down 18 garment factories for safety reasons following the April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza, which housed five garment factories making clothes for Western brands.

Bangladesh's garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the South Asian country's exports, has seen a series of deadly accidents, including a fire in November that killed 112 people.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2...534188982.html

[Tifosi]

It never ends does it

On a more positive note, a woman has been rescued from the collapsed factory 17 days after it collapsed.

[hatzel]

Local police chief Khalilur Rahman said the fire killed eight people including the owner, his four staff, a senior police officer, and a low-level police official.

There were no workers among the casualties as there was no overnight production, police officials said.

Experience has taught us that workers in South Asia aren't exactly scared of setting shit on fire when they're pissed off, and the anger in the Dhaka is running pretty high at the moment. Is there the possibility of this being arson, perhaps? Or is the timing more likely to be sheer coincidence, do you think? I lean towards the latter at present (not least because a clandestine protest arson isn't much of a protest arson at all) but I'm not about to rule anything out before more details come through...