Garment factory in deadly Bangladesh blaze supplies Li & Fung

Rescue workers in Bangladesh recovered 109 bodies on Sunday after a fire tore through a garment factory, forcing many workers to jump from high windows to escape the smoke and flames.

Firefighters battled for several hours to control the blaze, which broke out on the ground floor of the nine-storey Tazreen Fashion plant, 30 kilometres north of the capital Dhaka on Saturday evening.

Survivors told how panicked staff, mostly women, desperately tried to escape the factory, which the owner said made clothes for international brands including Dutch chain C&A and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung company.

“There were more than 1,000 workers trapped in the factory,” one worker who gave her name only as Romesa, 42, told local media from her hospital bed.

“I jumped from a window on the fourth floor and found myself on the third-storey roof of another building. Several people fell out of the window and died.”

Bangladesh is a global centre for clothes manufacturing due to cheap labour, with many popular brands using huge factories to produce items for export to Western markets, but work conditions are often basic and safety standards low.