Firefighters brought a blaze at garment factory Matrix Styles Limited under control after three and a half hours, with crews still working inside the seven-storey building near Fakir Market in Gazi Degir Chala, Gazipur, on Saturday evening.

The fire broke out on the third floor around 2:45pm, according to Gazipur Fire Service Deputy Assistant Director Saidul Alam Chowdhury. Nine units from the Fire Service and Civil Defence contained the flames by around 6pm. Firefighters were continuing to douse residual fires at the site.

The response escalated in stages. Three units from Gazipur Chowrasta Modern Fire Station arrived first. As the blaze intensified, one unit from Konabari, three more from Gazipur and two from Rajendrapur joined the operation.

Fire Service Deputy Director Salauddin Ahmed said the fabric stock on site is slowing the final phase of the response. "Our firefighters are still working inside," Ahmed said. "It will take some time to put out the fire. Since this is a fabric warehouse, the stock has to be moved out piece by piece before the fire can be fully doused."

Crews rescued 70 people from the building. Officials said they were still checking whether anyone had been injured or killed.

The firefighting operation faced two site-level constraints that prolonged containment. The factory had no fire-fighting system of its own, and crews found no pond or other water source nearby, according to the Fire Service account.

The Fire Service said the cause of the fire, and whether the factory had any safety lapses, will be disclosed after a detailed inquiry. No findings have been released at this stage.

Gazipur is one of Bangladesh's densest ready-made garment production clusters, and the incident comes weeks after a gas cylinder blast at a garment factory in Ashulia killed six people on 20 September.

For sourcing teams with capacity booked in the Gazipur corridor, the immediate task is to establish whether Matrix Styles Limited figures in their supplier base or subcontractor network, and to quantify fabric and work-in-progress inventory exposure on the affected floor. The confirmed facts — no on-site fire-fighting system and no accessible water source — will feed directly into the pending safety inquiry, and buyers running Bangladesh programmes under structural and fire safety compliance protocols should treat that inquiry's findings, once published, as the trigger for any corrective action or order-reallocation decision.