Pakistani firemen began pulling bodies from the smouldering remains of a sprawling Karachi shopping mall yesterday where more than 60 people were still missing after a massive fire that killed at least 21.
The city’s biggest fire in over a decade started late on Saturday at Gul Plaza, which houses 1,200 shops in a multi-storey complex spread across an area larger than a football field.
The blaze in Karachi’s historic centre raged for more than 24 hours before it was mostly extinguished.
Videos showed flames ripping through the building as firemen laboured through the night to put out the blaze. Yesterday, they began cooling the structure and clearing twisted metal and debris strewn across the street, along with fallen air-conditioning units and shop signboards.
Most of the building had crumbled by the afternoon; cranes demolished the remaining structure amid fears it might collapse.
Qasir Khan said his wife, daughter-in-law and her mother had gone to the mall on Saturday evening and were among those still missing.
“The bodies will come out in pieces from here. No one will be able to recognise them,” Khan said, blaming the rescue effort for not being swift enough. “They could have saved a lot of people.”
Hundreds of people surrounded the building as rescue teams searched for survivors, including shopowners whose life’s work was reduced to ash overnight. “We’ve been left high and dry, reduced to zero; 20 years of hard work, all gone,” said shopkeeper Yasmeen Bano.
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