Mall fire kills at least 10 people in Pakistan

A devastating fire engulfed a multi-storey shopping center in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Saturday, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens of others, officials said. The disaster drew attention to the ongoing fire risks in a densely populated city where building codes are often ignored.

The fire started around 6:30 a.m. on the second floor of the RJ Mall, a commercial high-rise that housed shops as well as call centers and other businesses on a busy city road. The fire quickly spread to the fourth, fifth and sixth floors, trapping several dozen people.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Video captured the scene as rescuers worked to extract the victims. Firefighters fought the blaze with extinguishers, their efforts hampered by thick smoke.

“When the fire started, I just ran out of the building,” Zaheed Ahmed, an employee at a clothing store in the mall, said in an interview. “The smoke was so thick I couldn’t understand what was happening.”

Karachi, the country’s economic hub with a population of 20.3 million, is home to an extensive network of factories and towering high-rises, but the city’s firefighting infrastructure is inadequate to deal with the frequent fires. Urban planners and engineers last week at a symposium said that about 90 percent of all buildings in Karachi – residential, commercial and industrial – did not have fire prevention and fire fighting systems.

In April, four firefighters were killed and nearly a dozen others injured after a massive fire broke out at a garment factory in Karachi, and in August 2021, 10 people were killed in a fire at a chemical factory. hundreds of employees died in 2012 when a multi-storey garment factory caught fire.

“Government officials rarely inspect the industrial, residential and commercial buildings, and therefore building safety regulations are often overlooked, allowing dangerous conditions to exist that go unnoticed,” said Qazi Khizer, Vice Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog. , said in an interview.

“This negligence has created a culture of complacency, where property owners and businesses put profits before the safety of their residents and employees,” he said.