Four injured, shanties gutted in blazes

Flames reduced six shanties to ashes, damaged 10 others before being contained

KARACHI:

Four people were injured and several shanties were gutted in separate blazes in the city on Sunday night. All four members of a family sustained burn injuries when a fire broke out in a house in the residential area near Baba Morh in Surjani Town.

The injured, identified as Jamal Azeem, 59, his wife Shabana, 45, and their daughters, Ambreen, 30, and Ramsha, 22, were shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and to the burns ward at Dr Ruth Pfau's Civil Hospital. According to people in the neighbourhood, the fire was a result of a gas cylinder explosion.

Household goods were gutted in the blaze, which spread as fire officials did not arrive in time, they claimed. wehn contaced , Mangophir SHO Adnan Siddiqui said he was unaware of the incident. Separately, six shanties were reduced to ashes when a fire broke out in a settlement behind Aziz Bhatti Park in Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

At least 10 other shanties were also damaged in the blaze before fire officials arrived and managed to douse it. It took half an hour for fire officials to keep the flames from spreading to other shanties but all goods in the affected shanties were gutted. Fire officials said their team faced difficulties navigating through the narrow pathways to enter the shanty settlement. The cause behind the fire could not be ascertained till the filing of this report.