At least five women workers were killed and several injured Saturday in a blast inside a clothes-making sweatshop in an industrial township 25 kilometres east of the capital Dhaka, local officials said. The blast, which occurred in the boiler room of the sweatshop, shook nearby buildings, spreading panic among residents. "The whole place has been littered with parts of human bodies after the powerful explosion," said factory worker Abdur Rahim. The death toll was likely to rise as the condition of some of the injured was critical, hospital sources said. In Bangladesh ready-made garment factories are prone to accidents because of poor safety measures by the owners, many of whom run them like sweatshops, a report said. --SP 2132 Local Time 1832 GMT
