11 workers from India, Bangladesh killed in Saudi house fire

RIYADH: Eleven migrant labourers died of asphyxiation in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in a fire that engulfed the windowless house they shared, Saudi authorities said.

"Firefighters put out a blaze in an old house lacking windows for ventilation. Eleven people died of asphyxiation, and six others were injured" in the southern province of Najran, the civil defence said in a tweet.

The casualties all hailed from India and Bangladesh, it said.

Nine million foreigners work in the kingdom, many of them from South Asia, according to the last official figures released in 2015.