BASHUNDHARA CITY ON FIRE AGAIN!

A fire broke out on the seventh floor of Bashundhara City Shopping Complex late on Monday night. Mohammed Anjuman of Fire Service and Civil Defence headquarters told at 12:15am that several firefighting units rushed to the scene and swung into action. "Nothing else can be said at the moment," he added. Police blocked traffic on the Panthapath Road after the incident. Onlookers were crowding the sprawling complex. Seven Basundhara employees including its own firefighters died after Bangladesh's largest shopping mall turned into a towering inferno on Mar 13. An enquiry committee on Mar 18 said negligence of the Basundhara City authorities had caused the devastating fire. "The management took action only after the alarm bell had rung 79 times," said committee chief Iqbal Hossain Chowdhury. "The water system was ineffective," he told reporters after interviewing employees at the site. "The building has sufficient fire fighting equipment but not many trained personnel." Fire Brigade chief Abu Nayeem Mohammed Shahidullah had said that five floors, from the 15th to 19th, were burnt to a shell and the 14th was partially destroyed by the inferno. Bashundhara Group executive director Zahidur Rahman, however, said the blaze started on the 18th floor and spread down to the 13th and up to the 20th, gutting those storeys including chairman Ahmed Akber Sobhan's office on the 19th The owners of Basundhara City, opened to the public in August 2004, claim it is the largest shopping mall in South Asia and the 12th largest in the world.