Pakistan Mall Fire Leaves Six Dead, Twenty Injured

(MENAFN) At least six people have died and more than 20 sustained injuries after a catastrophic blaze tore through a major shopping complex in Karachi, Pakistan's southern port metropolis, authorities confirmed Sunday.

The fire ignited late Saturday night at Gul Plaza, a towering multi-story retail center on MA Jinnah Road housing over 1,200 commercial outlets, according to Sadia Javed, spokesperson for Sindh province.

Javed told Xinhua that emergency crews have been battling relentlessly to suppress the third-degree fire, which rapidly consumed multiple levels of the structure.

By early Sunday morning, responders had contained approximately 40 percent of the inferno, Hassaanul Haseeb Khan from Rescue 1122 reported. "The majority of the shops contain goods such as crockery, clothing, electrical appliances, cosmetics and perfumes, which intensified the fire," the rescue official stated, noting that a portion of the plaza had caved in, burying one rescue worker beneath the rubble.

Khan emphasized that multiple individuals remain trapped inside the building as extraction operations continue.

Law enforcement authorities traced the fire's origin to ground-floor retail units, with preliminary investigations pointing to an electrical short circuit as the likely cause before flames engulfed additional sections of the mall.

The disaster highlights ongoing safety concerns in Pakistan's commercial infrastructure, as firefighters work against time to prevent further casualties in one of the nation's deadliest retail fires in recent years.

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