Star Report

At least three people were injured in a fire at RK Tower in Dhaka’s Bangla Motors area yesterday afternoon.

The injured -- Mamun Sheikh (32), Manik Fakir (20), and Tafsir Mia (26) -- were admitted to Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery with 34, two and seven percent burns, respectively.

The three were working on the sixth floor of the 10-storey building when the fire broke out around 12:15pm.

The floor houses a godown of Rabeya Enterprise, which sells products online.

Eight firefighting units doused the fire around 4:15pm, said Debashis Bardhan, deputy director (operations and maintenance) of Fire Service and Civil Defence.

Debashis said there was no permission to run a godown on the floor. Besides, minimum fire safety arrangements were absent there.

Abu Saied, account officer of Rabeya Enterprise, said they suspected that the fire originated from an electric short-circuit.

Meanwhile, in Chattogram city, a fire broke out in a slum at Agrabad SRB Colony around 4:20am.

A total of five shanties in the slum were gutted in the incident, said police and fire service officials.

On information, six firefighting vehicles rushed to the spot and managed to douse the blaze around 6:00am, said Farid Ahmed, sub-assistant director of Fire Service and Civil Defence, Chattogram.

Primary investigation to ascertain the source of the fire is ongoing.

Officials, however, suspected that a short-circuit caused the fire.

After the fire broke out, Abdul Jalil (70), who lived next to the slum, died of cardiac arrest, possibly due to seeing the fire, said Sakhawat Hossain, officer-in-charge of Sadarghat Police Station.