Fire tears through Bangladesh's capital, kills more than 80

A devastating fire raced through densely packed buildings in a centuries-old shopping district in Bangladesh's capital, killing at least 81 people, officials and witnesses said Thursday. 

The fire in Dhaka's Chawkbazar area was mostly under control after more than 10 hours of frantic efforts by firefighters. Some of the about 50 people injured were critically burned.

The district dating to the Mughal era 400 years ago is crammed with buildings separated by narrow alleys. The neighbourhood is a mix of residential and commercial, with buildings that commonly have shops, restaurants or warehouses on the ground floors.

The blaze started late Wednesday night in one building but quickly spread to others, fire department Director General Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmed said.

Many of the victims were trapped inside the buildings, said Mahfuz Riben, a control room official of the Fire Service and Civil Defence in Dhaka.

"Our teams are working there but many of the recovered bodies are beyond recognition. Our people are using body bags to send them to the hospital morgue, this is a very difficult situation," he told the Associated Press by phone.

Another control room official, Russel Shikder, said 81 bodies had been recovered.

The fire services director, Maj. AKM Shakil Newaz, said many were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Ambulances were arriving carrying bodies, and relatives were mourning in front of the morgue.

Road closures slowed response

First responders were delayed reaching the site in part because nearby roads were closed for national holiday commemorations on Thursday. Just after midnight as the fire blazed, Bangladesh's prime minister and president laid wreaths at a monument just over a kilometre away to commemorate protesters who died in a 1952 demonstration for the right to speak Bengali, the local language.

Fire officials said the road closures worsened traffic, slowing down some of the fire trucks rushing to the site.

Most buildings in Chawkbazar are used both for residential and commercial purposes despite warnings of the potential for high fatalities from fires after one had killed at least 123 people in 2010. Authorities had promised to bring the buildings under regulations and remove chemical warehouses from the residential buildings.

The death toll could still rise as the condition of some of the injured people was critical, said Samanta Lal Sen, head of a burn unit of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Sen said at least nine of the critically injured people were being treated in his unit.

Witnesses told local TV stations that many gas cylinders stored in the buildings continued to explode one after another. They said the fire also set off explosions in fuel tanks of some of the vehicles that got stuck in traffic in front of the destroyed buildings.

Some reports suggested many of the dead were pedestrians, shoppers or diners who died quickly as several gas cylinders exploded, and the fire engulfed the nearby buildings very quickly.

Officials said the firefighters struggled to get close to the scene because of heavy traffic and narrow alleys that were busy when the fire started.