Death toll rises to 6 in Bangladesh earthquake; buildings damaged, fires reported at some places

The quake hit at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), German Research Center for Geosciences said.

At least six people were killed and several injured after tremors were felt across West Bengal including Kolkata and parts of northeast as an earthquake of magnitude 5.7 hit Bangladesh's Narsingdi on Friday, the IMD said.

Three people were killed in Dhaka, while the fourth died in the suburban river port town of Narayanganj, officials said, as local media reported injuries to at least 50 people across the country.

The other two deaths were reported from Narsingdi, where the epicentre was located some 10 kilometres beneath the surface.

The quake struck 13 km south-southwest of Narsingdi in Bangladesh at 10.08 am, and at a depth of 10 km, it said.

Several people were seen coming out on the streets in Kolkata and Assam's Guwahati as a precautionary measure, PTI reported.

Scared residents rushed out of their homes in Dhaka as buildings shook and some makeshift structures collapsed, Reuters reported quoting witnesses.

Dhaka’s deputy police commissioner Mallik Ahsan Uddin Sami said, quoting the fire service, that at least three people were killed after a railing, bamboo scaffolding and debris of a five-storey building fell on them at Old Dhaka’s Armanitola area.

A bystander was critically wounded at the scene in the crowded neighbourhood, he said.

Sami confirmed that one of the deceased was a medical student who was there to buy meat along with his mother. She is critically wounded, requiring an emergency surgery, he added.

Local media reports said one of the three dead was an eight-year-old who had not been identified.

The fourth death was reported from Narayanganj where a newborn baby on her mother’s lap died as they were walking near a wall that collapsed as the tremor hit.

In Sutrapur's Swamibagh area, also located in old Dhaka, an eight-storey building was reported to have leaned against another structure following the earthquake, while at the Kalabagan area, a seven-storey building looked tilted, though fire officials reported it remained structurally sound.

A fire broke out at a residence in Dhaka’s posh Baridhara area soon after the tremor hit, but the firefighters could not immediately confirm if it was linked to the earthquake.

Another fire at a residential building was reported from the Gazaria area of suburban Munshiganj, while the fire service responded immediately to douse the blaze.

The Prothom Alo newspaper said the tremor wounded over 50 people in three districts around Dhaka.

Experts have long said the risk of major quakes was high in Bangladesh because of its location on active tectonic plate boundaries, with many of them saying a major earthquake is inevitable, though it could be decades away.

Earthquake expert Professor Mehedi Ahmed Ansary of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) said a tremor with a magnitude of 6 could collapse most structures in the country.

“This tremor (on Friday) is an alarm bell for Bangladesh,” Ansary said.