21 Die in Factory Explosion, Fire

A boiler exploded and triggered a fire at a packaging factory near Bangladesh's capital on Saturday, killing at least 21 people and injuring dozens, officials say. Several bodies were recovered from the five-story Tampaco Foils Ltd. factory in the Tongi industrial area outside Dhaka, fire official Mohammed Rafiquzzaman tells the AP. Fire officials working at the scene said that the explosion was huge and that the fire triggered by the blast spread quickly because flammable chemicals were stored at the factory.

Local TV stations said about 50 people were injured in Saturday's disaster, indicating that the death toll could be higher. Television footage showed smoke billowing from the factory, with the fire engulfing part of the upper floors. Factory safety is a major concern in Bangladesh, which has thousands of garment and packaging factories that supply products to global clothing chains like Wal-Mart and H&M. In 2012, a fire at a garment factory in a Dhaka suburb killed 112 workers. A year later, a commercial complex near Dhaka housing five garment factories collapsed, killing 1,135 people in Bangladesh's worst-ever industrial disaster. (More Bangladesh stories.)