Dhaka: At least six persons – all staff of a restaurant here – were killed when a fire broke out and then spread to a plastic factory in the four-storey building, officials said Tuesday. The firefighters on six bodies Tuesday from the gutted building that housed a plastic factory and a restaurant in Old Dhaka’s Chawkbazar area, ‘BDNews 24’ quoted Shahjahan Sikder, assistant director of the fire service, as saying.
The workers were sleeping on the first floor after finishing their night duty when the fire broke out around 12 midnight in the restaurant. Then it later spread to the plastic factory in the building, Bazrul Rashid, deputy assistant director of the Fire Service, said.
“We found six bodies inside the building,” said Anwarul Islam, a fire service official.
According to a ‘Daily Star’ Bangladesh report, all those who died in the incident Monday were staff members of Barisal Hotel and Restaurant that occupied the ground floor of the building. A factory and storage for plastic toys and polythene were on the upper floors, local people said.
Rows of plastic factories and warehouses of plastic goods line the narrow alleys of Chawkbazar’s Kamalbagh area where the fire broke out Monday.
Meanwhile, police early Tuesday detained Fakaruddin, the owner of the restaurant, Abdul Kaiyum, officer-in-charge of Chawkbazar Police Station, said.