At least 34 people have died after a fire that sparked a huge chemical explosion at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, officials said, AFP reported.

The toll is 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.

The injured include at least 40 firefighters and 10 police officers, Chittagong regional police chief Anwar Hossain told AFP. At least five firefighters were among those killed.

The container depot held hydrogen peroxide, fire service chief Brigadier General Main Uddin told reporters. “We still could not control the fire because of the existence of this chemical,” he said.

Chowdhury, the chief doctor in Chittagong, said the injured had been rushed to different hospitals in the region as doctors were brought back from holiday to help.

Requests for blood donations for the injured flooded social media.

Emergency crews were still working to put out the fire Sunday morning, and military clinics were helping to treat the injured.

Mominur Rahman, chief administrator of Chittagong district, said the government has deployed some 200 army troops to the depot to prevent chemicals flowing into the sea.