The fire started on Saturday night at the BM container depot in Sitakunda, Chittagong district, according to Bangladesh State News Agency Sangbad Sangstha (BSS).
Among the dead were at least nine firefighters who had been deployed to put out the flames, BSS reported. Two firefighters went missing Sunday afternoon.
Firefighters were still working to extinguish the blaze Sunday afternoon as containers full of chemicals, such as hydrogen peroxide or sulfur, continued to erupt, Reuters reported, citing fire officials.
Although the cause of the fire is unknown, fire officials said it may have originated from a container with hydrogen peroxide and spread to other containers.
“It’s really getting harder and harder as toxic fumes engulf the area,” Newton Das, a firefighter, told Reuters.
Local residents told the agency that the initial blast shook the neighborhood and later shattered some of the glass in the local infrastructure.
Depot authorities have announced that they will provide 10 lakhs of Bangladesh taka (about $ 11,200) in compensation to each family of workers who died in the fire, BSS said.
They also pledged to pay six lakh taka from Bangladesh (about $ 6,700) to each seriously injured worker who lost body parts in the fire and four lakh taka from Bangladesh (about $ 4,500) to other injured workers.
The company has formed a five-member investigative committee to investigate the deadly incident, the state news agency reported.
The incident is the latest in a series of fatal industrial accidents over several years in the South Asian nation.
In December, at least 38 people were killed after a fire destroyed a rocket on the Sugandha River in the southern district of Jhalakathi. A few months earlier, at least 52 people had been killed and about 50 injured when a large fire engulfed a juice factory in Rupganj, east of the capital Dhaka.
With additional Reuters reports.