An massive fire ripped through one of Bangladesh's largest slums on Wednesday, 11 March, leaving hundreds of shanties gutted and thousands of people homeless, according to media reports.
The fire broke out on Wednesday morning at the Shialbari Jhilpar Slum in Mirpur's Rupnagar residential area where some 20,000 people lived in around 2,000 shanties.
Fire Service and Civil Defence Director (Operations) Zillur Rahman told reporters that no casualty was reported immediately.
“The cause of the fire will be known after investigation. We will form a four-member probe team and it will be asked to submit its report within 10 days,” Rahman was quoted as saying by The Dhaka Tribune.
He said the narrow lanes around the slum and shortage of water had caused difficulty for about 20 fire fighting units in putting out the blaze.
Hundreds of low-income residents of the slum lost their belongings and shelters as the fire burnt them to ashes, Rahman said.
Local lawmaker Elias Uddin Mollah told reporters that some 20,000 people lived in 2,000 shanties in the Shialbari Jhilpar Slum.
Mollah, who was at the scene of the blaze, said the residents affected by the fire will temporarily be lodged in a school nearby.
“No one will be living under the open sky. We will stand by them until their homes become habitable. We will bear all the expenses relating to their food, shelter and clothing,” he told bdnews24.com.
"The area shelters hundreds of thousands of poor residents," Officer-in-Charge of Rupnagar Police Station Abul Kalam Azad told The Daily Star newspaper.
According to slum dwellers and fire officials, illegal gas and electricity connections in the slum caused the fire.
There was no natural source of water like pond or canal in the area which resulted in delay in dousing the blaze, an official said.
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