DHAKA: At least 10 people were killed on Sunday when a fire swept through a fan factory near Bangladesh's capital, police said, the second such accident in less than a week.

Firefighters recovered 10 bodies as the fire ripped through the three-storey factory at Gazipur, on the outskirts of Dhaka, local police official, Jabedul Islam, said.

It was not immediately clear how many workers were inside the factory when the fire broke out and what caused the blaze, he added.

"Firefighters are still searching inside the factory" Islam said, adding it took scores of firefighters two hours to bring the fire under control.

The blaze comes four days after a devastating fire at a plastics factory, operating without proper government permissions, just outside Dhaka killed at least 19 people.

Such accidents in factories, many of which operate illegally and without proper fire safety measures, are common in Bangladesh.

The Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 killed more than 1,100 workers and a fire in a garment factory in 2012 killed 112 people.