Karachi Gul Plaza fire death toll rises to at least 71

The death toll in the fire at a shopping plaza in Pakistan’s Karachi has now risen to at least 71, officials confirmed, with around 77 people still reported missing a week after the tragic incident.

The fire broke out in the basement of the Gul Shopping Plaza, a wholesale and retail market, and quickly spread to the rest of the building in the Saddar area on the night of 17 January. Flames raged through the multi-storey plaza — which housed nearly 1,200 shops — for 36 hours before being brought under control.

A criminal case has been registered over the massive fire incident, with police citing negligence and lack of safety measures in the FIR.

Deputy commissioner south Javed Nabi Khoso told the media on Sunday that 71 bodies or human remains have been recovered from the rubble and debris of the shopping plaza. “The rescue and search operations which have continued for a week now would likely be wound up by tomorrow as the rubble and debris are also being cleaned up from the building site,” Khoso said. He said they still had a list of some 12 people feared missing in the fire.\Dr Summaiya Syed, the police surgeon in Sindh province, said they had received 71 bodies and human remains since last Sunday. “The process of identification is very difficult because most of the bodies are badly burnt and charred and in many cases we have just received body parts in bags from the site,” she said.

Syed added that only 22 bodies had been identified so far with the help of DNA matching and that “still a lot of work remains to be done before all bodies are identified”. Around 20 people who were brought to hospitals injured from the building had all been discharged after treatment, she said.

Khoso said search teams were still recovering human remains or parts. “Last night also we found human remains from the debris,” he added.

The FIR registered over the incident cites sections of the Pakistan Penal Code including negligence and harmful conduct, and notes that several exit points and safety systems were absent or non-functional, worsening the tragedy.

Officials have also sealed the building, and a technical team from NED University is examining the structure to assess whether it must be demolished, partially or entirely.

Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah told the provincial assembly that the damaged plaza will eventually be demolished and rebuilt within two years under approved safety plans, and that traders will be provided temporary shops within months.

Meanwhile, the inferno has brought into focus the widespread lack of fire-fighting equipment and safety measures in most commercial buildings in Karachi, including shopping plazas, malls and office buildings — a longstanding issue that safety bodies and activists say contributed to the scale of the tragedy.

Muazzam Khan, a director in the Sindh Building Control Authority, said a fresh audit of many commercial buildings has been carried out after the fire and 30 of them have been issued notices to immediately comply with safety measures.

With PTI inputs