At least 34 people have died after a fire that sparked a huge chemical explosion and was still blazing on Sunday at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, officials said.

The toll was expected to rise with over 300 people injured, some of them seriously, and eyewitnesses said they had seen unrecovered bodies in the facility near the major southern port of Chittagong.

Several hundred rescuers were battling the blaze that broke out late Saturday in Sitakunda, about 40 kilometers from Chittagong, when a number of containers holding chemicals exploded, the fire brigade told reporters.