Death toll rises to 30 in Karachi fire
The death toll in the fire at a shopping plaza in Pakistan’s Karachi increased to 30 on Wednesday even as 73 persons, including 16 minor boys, remained missing amid continued rescue operations, officials said here. The fire broke out in the basement of the Gul Shopping Plaza, a wholesale and retail market, and quickly spread to the rest of the building in the Saddar area on January 17 night.
The fire was brought under control only after nearly 36 hours. Sindh police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed confirmed that the death toll from the fire had risen to 30 as two more bodies were recovered from the rubble on Wednesday morning. “The bodies were taken to Jinnah Hospital this morning which takes the casualties to 30. We have been able to identify just 10 as yet as the remaining bodies are badly burnt,” she said.
The Sindh provincial government issued an official list of 73 missing persons believed to have been inside the Gul Plaza when the fire broke out on Saturday night. According to Government data, the list of 73 missing people include women, children and adult males aged between 10 and 69 years of age. There are at least 16 boys aged between 10 and 18 who were either working at shops or were there for shopping and there are 10 women.
Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab said the list was compiled after collecting details from affected families and records of the shop owners and their workers in the plaza. “The shopping plaza’s shop owners association has been a big help in compiling this list,” he said. He made it clear that among the 30 bodies recovered from the building, so far at least 20 remained unidentified so they could be on the list.
More facts emerged about the condition of the building with a senior lawyer Abid Mateen confirming there were at least three pending cases in courts over the safety measures and condition of the building structure, which has been destroyed in the inferno. According to the chief fire officer at the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation Humayun Khan it could take another 10-15 days before rescue operations to locate the missing persons are completed.
Governor Sindh Kamran Tessori during a visit to the site on Wednesday told the media that every shop keeper would be compensated. The government has already begun talks with builders to rehabilitate the building, he said. “It is a national tragedy and we will not leave those who have lost their loved ones or their business unattended,” Tessori said. Rescue workers search amid the debris using excavators after a massive fire at a shopping mall in Karachi.
