Firemen in Karachi searched yesterday for more than 65 missing people after a massive fire tore through a shopping mall in the historic downtown district, killing six and reducing parts of the building to rubble.
Videos showed flames rising from the building as firemen laboured through the night to stop the blaze, which started on Saturday night, from spreading in the dense business district. After fighting the flames for over 24 hours, firemen began cooling the steaming rubble of the nearly collapsed structure.
Firemen told Pakistan’s local television station Geo News that the lack of ventilation in the mall, which houses more than 1,200 shops, caused the building to fill with smoke and slowed rescue efforts.
“It appears to have been caused by a circuit breaker,” Sindh police chief Javed Alam Odho told reporters at the site, according to Dawn News.
“The layout and construction of this market was such, and secondly, the nature of the items in it — such as carpets, blankets and other objects made of resins – so the fire is still simmering because of these.”
Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab told reporters at the scene that 65 people were still missing.
Rescue officials said six people had been killed and 20 others were wounded. They said parts of the building had started to collapse and the structure could come down.
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