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Bangladesh garment unit explosion kills 10

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KONABARI: A boiler explosion at a Bangladeshi garment plant near the city of Dhaka killed 10 people and injured dozens, emergency workers said on Tuesday.


The blast, late on Monday, occurred at a plant operated by local Bangladeshi firm Multifabs while maintenance work was going on, company and fire brigade officials said.


The explosion at the boiler, located in a tin-roofed shed, partially damaged a nearby three-storey factory building.


“I heard a big bang when I was having tea outside,” factory driver Hafiz Mostafa said, as dozens thronged the factory site and firefighters moved rubble in search of missing persons. “I saw windows, doors, glasses, machinery and a section of the wall of the building go flying.”


Families scoured the scene for missing people.


The plant had been shut for 10 days for Eid holidays at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and was being readied to resume operations on Tuesday, when the accident occurred.


“We’re looking for my brother. We checked all the hospitals, but have not found him,” said Nazim Uddin, whose brother Ershad Ullah worked as an electrician at the plant for the last decade.


Multifabs has many clients in Europe, its website says.


The company started operating in 1992 and reached $70 million in exports in 2016.


Its top buyers include fashion chain Lindex, which is part of Finland’s Stockmann, German supermarket chain Aldi, and Rexholm of Denmark, Faruqui said.


The company said the plant was functioning well and the six-year-old boiler, procured from Germany, had just been serviced.


— Reuters


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