Ten Bangladeshi workers in Bahrain were suffocated to death after inhaling toxic fumes from a fire that engulfed their home in the early hours of Sunday, reports said.

The accident occurred at East Riffa, 20km south off the capital Manama, in the morning.

A Bahrain judicial official was quoted as saying the workers 'died of suffocation.'

Initial investigations, according to the chief of public prosecution, point out that the cause of the fire was ascribable to an electric short-circuit, ruling out any suspicious criminal act as the cause of the fire, the Bahrain news Agency report said.

Eleven Bangladeshis, all from Comilla, lived in a house which caught fire in the morning, Bangladeshi officials were quoted as saying. One of them survived the accident, they said.