At least 44 people were killed and dozens injured when a fire ripped through a shopping mall late Thursday night in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, officials said.
Bachchu Mia, superintendent of police at the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, where many victims are being treated, said 27 of the 44 dead had been identified and their bodies had been handed over to their families.
“Most of them died of suffocation, not burning,” he said, making it easier to identify them.
At least 75 other people were injured, fire officials said.
Witnesses said the building had a staircase and elevator, with no emergency exit, making escape difficult. Some people some trapped inside jumped from higher floors, they said.
The fire broke out at around 9.51pm on the second floor of the mall, where a popular biryani restaurant is located. It quickly spread to the rest of the seven-story building, fire officials said, gutting a clothing store on the third floor.
It took crews at least two hours to extinguish the fire, officials said.
The video showed that most of the floors were charred by the flames. A firefighter atop a fire escape can be seen trying to put out a small fire that was still burning near one of the upper floors. Another video showed survivors descending a staircase as a crush of emergency workers, media and onlookers waited to receive them on the street below.
The shopping centre, 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 TV reporter. He added that the cylinders could have played a role in the fire spreading so quickly. Unknown what caused the fire.
The mall is a popular spot on Thursdays, the end of the working week in Bangladesh. By Friday morning only a burnt husk remained.
Alamgir Hossain, assistant manager at the fire department, said a restaurant called Kacchi Bhai was offering a special offer on Thursday night.
Mass casualty fires and industrial disasters, particularly in garment factories, are a recurring problem in Bangladesh. The country of 170 million people’s steady economic growth has been a regional success story in recent years, but human rights and labor groups have long expressed concern about poor working conditions and workplace safety measures.
The worst of the disasters occurred in 2013, when the collapse of an eight-story garment factory killed more than 1,100 people. In 2021, a factory fire in the town of Narayanganj killed more than 50 people.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police officers were investigating the scene on Friday morning, using a drone from above. Police tried to block hundreds of spectators.
Ismail Hossain Sohel, an information technology engineer who frequented a restaurant and music cafe, Ambrosia, in the building, said he was about to enter just before the fire engulfed the mall.
“I’ve never seen such destruction before,” he said, recounting how a man jumped from the third floor, injuring his head.
Salman Alim, who works at Pizza Inn in the mall, said his work day was over about two hours before the fire started.
By the time Mr. Alim returned, the fire was raging, he said. “None of our employees were killed,” he added. “They ran to the top floor and the firemen rescued them.”
