A fire raced early Sunday morning through an overcrowded slum alongside the railway tracks in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, killing one people and destroying more than 700 huts, police said.

Officer in-charge of Ramna Police Station in Dhaka Shibli Noman told Xinhua Sunday, "A woman of the slum killed being hit by a running train while escaping the incident."

He said several people were also injured during the fire, which is believed to have originated at about 4:45 a.m. local time from a mosquito coil.

On information, Noman said fire fighters rushed in and doused the blaze after frantic efforts but the fire charred most of the shanties.

The slum people could not save their valuables as they were in sound sleep when the fire broke out, eye witnesses said.

Every year fire in Dhaka slums, incidents most common, leaves thousands of people homeless. In 2008 in a big fire, which engulfed some 2,000 houses in a slum area in western Dhaka, left more than 10,000 people homeless.

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