KARACHI: At least 289 people were killed when a fire engulfed a packed garment factory in Karachi, and dozens of others were hurt as they jumped out of windows to save their lives, according to officials.
The evening blaze in the four-storey factory in Pakistan’s largest city coincided with another at a shoe plant in Lahore on Tuesday that killed at least 25 people.
“We have so far recovered 289 bodies and we fear that some more bodies could be inside the basement of the building,” Karachi fire chief Ehtesham Salim said.
“The factory was flimsily built. It was packed like a box with little room left for ventilation. There were no emergency exits,” Salim said.
“We found people who died because of suffocation caused by the highly toxic smoke. They died first and then their bodies were burned by the raging fire.”
Salim said about 35 fire engines were taking part in the firefighting.
“Most of the fire has been extinguished, but there is smouldering in some parts due to plastics and chemicals,” he said.
Workers said the factory made underwear and also plastic utensils in one section.
Salim added that the blaze was Karachi’s “biggest fire in terms of deaths in decades”.
In January 2009, 40 people were killed, more than half of them children, when a fire engulfed dozens of wooden homes in Karachi’s impoverished Baldia neighbourhood.
Some shouting and sobbing relatives of trapped workers, desperate to get inside the factory, scuffled with police during the night, an AFP photographer said.
Rescuers used arc lights to work through the night. A steady stream of bodies were stretchered out, covered by white sheets.
Bodies were taken to Civil Hospital, Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Complex and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. More than 30 bodies were handed over to heirs after identification.
“The bodies are badly charred,” Salam told AFP, adding that at least 65 other workers had suffered broken bones after jumping out of windows to escape the flames.
Firefighters on crane lifts reached through the gutted building’s windows to rescue some trapped survivors, who were taken to hospitals suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Mohammad Saleem, 32, who broke a leg after jumping out of the second floor, said he and his colleagues were hard at work late on Tuesday when flames suddenly reached their section.
“It was terrible, suddenly the entire floor filled with fire and smoke and the heat was so intense that we rushed towards the windows, broke its steel grille and glass and jumped out,” Saleem told AFP in hospital.
“I fell on the ground and it was extremely painful, I saw many people jumping out of windows and crying in pain for help,” he said.
Around 150 employees were working at the time in one of the factory’s three round-the-clock shifts, Saleem said.
Officials said the cause of the Karachi fire was not yet known but Rauf Siddiqi, the industry minister for Sindh province, said the factory owner was under investigation for negligence.
“We have ordered an inquiry into how the fire erupted and why proper emergency exits were not provided at the factory so that the workers could escape,” Siddiqi said.
The blaze in Pakistan’s second-largest city Lahore on Tuesday trapped dozens of workers in the shoe-making factory, killing 25 and injuring 14 others, local officials and medics said.
Tariq Zaman, a government official in Lahore, said the fire was caused by a faulty electricity generator.
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