Death toll rises to 14 in shopping mall fire in Pakistan’s Karachi

Karachi: The death toll from a horrific fire in an old shopping mall in Pakistan’s Karachi has risen to 14 after rescue teams found eight more bodies from the building rubble.

The fire, which broke out on Saturday night at the Gul Plaza, a wholesale and retail market which had shops in the basement, mezzanine and three more floors, was brought under control by Sunday night.

Six bodies were found immediately after the fire broke out. They had died due to suffocation while dozens of injured were sent to hospitals. However, as the fire spread, rescue teams were unable to go in.

“Once the fire was doused, we didn’t wait for the cooling period and forcibly went in to rescue trapped people and we found eight more bodies, some badly charred,” Rescue 1122 Chief Operating Officer (COO) Abid Jalal said.

He told PTI on Monday morning that the fire had almost completely damaged the building with one back and one front portion collapsing because of weak pillars.

“The building structure has been weakened by the fire and we are still continuing to search for any remaining people because we could see more structural collapses,” Jalal said.

The market, which had around 1200 shops on all floors, has been one of Karachi’s landmarks since the early 1980s on the main M A Jinnah Road in the Saddar commercial area.

Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori, who came to the site this morning, told the media that 70 people were still trapped inside the building.

“We are extremely concerned and alarmed. Efforts are going on to find them but this is a national tragedy,” Tessori said.

South DIG Syed Asad Raza told the media that the casualties could increase because there was still a lot more space to be covered to find survivors.

He said an electrical short circuit might have caused the fire but said the cause has yet to be confirmed.

Gul Plaza is not the first shopping mall to catch fire in Karachi as in recent years there have been several incidents due to lack of safety and inadequate fire fighting systems and overloaded electrical systems and illegal constructions in Pakistan’s biggest city.

In 2024, a government audit found that in 266 shopping malls and commercial buildings located on major roads, only six had proper fire safety measures with 62 per cent lacking emergency exits and 70 per cent having substandard electrical systems.

In December 2024, in an adjacent building to Gul Plaza, also built in the early 1980s, fire broke out on two floors but was quickly brought under control.

In 2012, at least 259 people were killed when a fire broke out in a garment factory in Baldia town.