At least 13 people were killed and 15 injured when lightning struck a makeshift mosque in a remote village in Bangladesh as locals were holding special Ramadan prayers, police say.
The imam was among those killed when the powerful lightning bolt hit the flimsy tin and thatch building at Saraswatipur village in the northeast, 200km from the capital Dhaka.
About 35 people from the village, which is in the lake district of Sunamganj, were holding prayers known as taraweeh, offered during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when the lightning struck, police chief Bayes Alam said.
"All 13, including the imam, died on the spot. The bodies and faces of some of the victims were burned," Alam said, adding that at least 15 people were injured.
The locals had turned the room into a mosque because heavy rains had affected the village's concrete-roofed mosque.
