Hello and welcome to the details of Grieving families await bodies after Bangladesh fire and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Most of those who perished suffocated in the smoke. — AFP pic
DHAKA, March 1 — Anguished families kept vigil outside the morgue of Bangladesh’s largest hospital today, waiting for the bodies of loved ones to be identified after a fire they say should never have happened.
At least 46 people were killed in Thursday night’s blaze in an upscale neighbourhood of the capital Dhaka, which broke out in a popular biryani restaurant and quickly engulfed a seven-floor commercial building.
Most of those who perished suffocated in the smoke, while the bodies of others were burned beyond recognition in the resulting inferno.
Among the dead was young university student Minhaj Khan, whose failure to escape the fire was witnessed by a friend with him at the restaurant, and confirmed to AFP by his older cousin at the hospital.
Advertisement
Khan’s mother had travelled to the hospital insisting his companion was mistaken, angrily sending away doctors requesting a DNA swab to check against bodies brought to the morgue.
“I won’t listen to anyone. I don’t believe any of you. I only want my son. Nothing else,” she told AFP, declining to give her name.
“He promised to take me to Mecca for the pilgrimage. How can I go to Mecca without him?”
Advertisement
It took fire crews two hours to bring the blaze under control, with members of the public stepping in to carry hoses and help guide those escaping from the building to safety.
Before they arrived, many inside had rushed upstairs to the rooftop to escape the quickly spreading inferno.
Kazi Taslim Uddin said his 20-year-old son was among the dozens being treated in hospital for injuries after being forced to clamber down the side of the building.
“He tried to go to the ground floor but failed as people were rushing up the opposite way,” he told AFP.
“He grabbed some cables and tried to climb down but they weren’t long enough,” he added.
“He jumped and got injured. His lungs were also scorched by the smoke.”
‘Could have saved many lives’
Thursday marked the latest in a long list of deadly fire incidents in the Muslim-majority nation, where building safety standards are lax and corruption often allows them to be ignored.
But they are more common in industrial complexes and tenement buildings, and the blaze in one of Dhaka’s more well-heeled neighbourhoods was a deep shock to many in the city.
Firefighters said the latest blaze was accidentally sparked from an improperly stored cooking gas cylinder, and made much worse by the quick chain-reaction explosions of other canisters stored haphazardly around the building.
Bereaved family members at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital were furious that nothing had been done to alert the public to the fire risk at the restaurant beforehand.
“It could have saved many lives,” said one man waiting to retrieve the body of a cousin who perished in the blaze, who declined to identify himself.
“All these buildings are ticking time bombs. The regulators wake up only after the disaster occurs.” — AFP
These were the details of the news Grieving families await bodies after Bangladesh fire for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
