Five members of a family suffocated to death early Thursday when fire swept through their three-storey building in Bangladesh's Chittagong seaport city, some 242 km southeast of capital Dhaka, police said.

"We've recovered five bodies after fire is brought under control," Syed Abdur Rouf, officer-in-charge of a local police station in Chittagong, told Xinhua over mobile phone.

It seems all the fire victims died of smoke inhalation, he said.

Rouf said the fire originated in a shop on the ground floor of the building from an electric short circuit on Thursday night at about 2:55 a.m. local time, trapping over a dozen of its residents who were asleep.

On receipt of information, fire fighters rushed to the spot and doused the baize which lasted for few hours.

Thick smoke quickly engulfed the building reportedly after the fire spread fueled by the explosion of gas cylinder of a microbus at its garbage.

Fire accident is not a rare scene in the South Asian country. At least 119 people died in a devastating home fire, which is believed to be originated from a chemical godown, broke out in a very congested area of capital Dhaka's old part in June 2010.