At least 44 people were killed and dozens injured when a fire ripped through a shopping mall Thursday night in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, officials said.
Bachchu Mia, police inspector at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, where several victims were being treated, said 27 of the 44 dead had been identified and their bodies handed over to their families.
“Most of them died from asphyxiation, not from burns,” he said, facilitating their identification.
At least 75 other people were injured, firefighters said.
Witnesses said the building had a staircase and an elevator, with no emergency exit, making escape difficult. Some people trapped inside jumped from higher floors, they said.
The fire broke out around 9:51 pm on the second floor of the mall, which features a popular biryani restaurant. It quickly spread to the rest of the seven-story building, firefighters said, and leveled a clothing store on the third floor.
It took crews at least two hours to put out the fire, officials said.
The video showed that most of the floors had been charred by the flames. A firefighter could be seen atop a fire ladder trying to extinguish a small fire still burning near one of the upper floors. Other The video showed the survivors being taken down. to a stairwell as a group of emergency workers, media and spectators waited to greet them on the street below.
The shopping center, on Bailey Road, is home to a mix of restaurants and shops. Almost every floor has a restaurant, and most have gas cylinders, a fire official told a television reporter. He added that the cylinders could have contributed to the fire spreading so quickly. It was unknown what caused the fire.
The mall is a popular spot on Thursdays, the end of the work week in Bangladesh. By Friday morning only a burnt shell remained.
Alamgir Hossain, deputy director of the fire department, said a restaurant called Kacchi Bhai had been offering a special on Thursday night.
Mass casualty fires and industrial disasters, particularly in garment factories, have been a recurring problem in Bangladesh. Steady economic growth in the country of 170 million people has been a regional success story in recent years, but labor and human rights organizations have long expressed concerns about poor working conditions and safety measures in the country. Workplace.
The worst of the disasters occurred in 2013, when the collapse of an eight-story textile factory killed more than 1,100 people. In 2021, a factory fire in the city of Narayanganj killed more than 50 people.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police officers were investigating the scene on Friday morning using a drone. The police tried to corral hundreds of spectators.
Ismail Hossain Sohel, an information technology engineer who frequently visited a restaurant and music cafe, Ambrosia, in the building, said he was about to enter just before the fire engulfed the mall.
“I have never seen a disaster like this before,” he said, recounting how a man jumped from the third floor and hurt his head.
Salman Alim, who works at Pizza Inn in the mall, said his work day had ended about two hours before the fire started.
When Alim returned, the fire was already burning, he said. “None of our employees died,” she added. “They ran to the top floor and the firefighters rescued them.”
