The explosion shook buildings for miles.
"I saw balls of fire in the sky falling like rain," says Mohgammad Ali, a grocer who lives in the neighborhood.
A cylinder flew about half a kilometer from the scene of the fire to land in our little pond.
The testimonies pouring in after the gigantic chemical explosion suggest the violence of the drama that unfolded in the suburbs of Chittagong, the largest port in Bangladesh through which 90% of the country's annual trade passes.
While firefighters were called for a fire in a depot, several containers of chemicals exploded causing the death according to a first provisional report of 49 people.
More than 300 people are injured.
"It's such a tragedy that we lost nine firefighters and many other civilians," said Akhter uz Zaman, a firefighter on site.
There may be more missing.
But we won't be able to say that officially until we've thoroughly searched the complex."
A driver who was there at the time of the explosion, admitted to hospital with injuries, said: “I was standing about 18 m from the explosion.
I watched as the firefighters tried to put out the fire.
I had not understood that a tragedy of such magnitude was going to strike.
There were two small explosions at the start.
The third shook the whole deposit.
The chemical fumes literally overwhelmed us.
My eyes were burned”.
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The army has announced the dispatch of 250 soldiers to help with relief operations.
The troops are tasked with preventing chemicals from spilling into the sea, with sandbags.
The containers also contained clothes whose stock was worth millions of dollars and which were to be exported to Western countries.
The causes of the fire that broke out in this depot are not yet known, but fires are frequent in Bangladesh where safety standards are not respected.
In July 2021, more than 50 people died in a fire at a gigantic food processing plant outside the capital, Dhaka.