A fire damaged an unspecified amount of polio vaccines on the 1-1 th floor of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) building yes-terday evening.

The fire, lasting half an hour from about 5:30pm. burnt two deep fridges containing the vaccines. one carton of bleaching powder, furniture, files ana documents kept inside a room used by Urban Health Care Project (UHCP) under the DCC, our correspondents who visited the spot said.

DCC officials said that the damage would not affect the immunisation programme, scheduled for today. The officials claimed polio vaccines had already been distributed to most city immunisation centres.

The damaged vaccines were to be used today in case of emergency.

Mayor Mohammad Hanlf is scheduled to inaugurate the immunisation programme at his city corporation office at around 12 pm today .

"Only emergency vaccines for (DCC) Zone-2 were destroyed in the fire,' said Rashidul Alam. DCC chief executive officer.

Alain said DCC would buy more vaccines to Complete the programme.

No human casualties, however. were reported. Neither police nor fire officials could confirm the origin of the fire till filing of this report last night.

But Solaiman. a security guard stationed on the 12th floor of the building, said he saw smoke coming from the 11th floor room and called police.

Solaiman said he believed the fire might have originated from an air cooler installed at a room of a DCC health official on the eleventh floor.

There was nobody in the room but the air cooler was on, said Solaiman who suspected overheating of the cooler caused the fire.

Officials at the DCC control room however claimed the fire originated when an electricity wire short-circuited. They .said air coolers are not in use at this time of the year.

Firemen rushed to the spot and extinguished the flame entirely by 6:00pm.