Characterize source, EPA
Rescue teams on the scene after a passenger ferry caught fire near the southern metropolis of Jhalakathi, Bangladesh
No longer lower than 37 people had been killed and about 100 others injured after a packed ferry caught fire in southern Bangladesh, local officials order.
The blaze on the three-decked vessel started mid-river near the metropolis of Jhalakathi as it sailed from the capital Dhaka to the metropolis of Barguna.
About a of the victims drowned after jumping into the water.
The different of casualties in Friday’s catastrophe is inclined to prolong as most of the passengers maintain severe burns.
As many as 500 people had been reportedly on board the vessel.
The fireplace is believed to maintain started in the engine room and presently unfold because the ferry travelled alongside the Sugandha river in the early hours, fire companies official Kamal Hossain Bhuiyan urged local media.
The blaze reportedly persevered for hours.
One passenger who survived, an elderly grandmother, urged AFP files agency most folks had been snoozing when the fire broke out.
“We had been snoozing on a mat on the ground floor deck,” she acknowledged. My 9-year-dilapidated grandson, Nayeem, turned into once with me, he jumped into the river. I do not know what took bid to him.”
Ferry risks left unaddressed for years
By Akbar Hossain, BBC News, Dhaka
It’s typical to seem ferries capsize in Bangladesh. Passengers are loaded on to poorly maintained boats, with poorly educated crews, generally contrivance above the vessel’s rated ability. A full bunch maintain drowned in the nation’s rivers in the past 10 years. But the fire that engulfed this ferry adds a fresh layer of apprehension to the myth.
The fireplace is thought to maintain started in the engine room, spreading presently, and sprinklers or other security features would per chance well even maintain had diminutive carry out.
This and other tragedies stem from a failure of enforcement. Operators are normally ever ever punished and so obnoxious ferries proceed to attend hundreds of passengers each and each day.
Virtually 30% of Bangladesh’s 170 million people commute by river routes. But they’re largely sad Bangladeshis, and the government has not made it a precedence to address lax security standards. Ferry disasters are so typical that there is diminutive global outcry to stress them, and it is broadly believed that the ferry house owners are politically great.
The cease result’s hundreds of poorer Bangladeshis risking their lives unbiased to originate it to work.
A nice committee has been area up to overview the incident, in step with experiences.
Barguna is ready 250km (155 miles) south of Dhaka.
Ferry accidents are not extraordinary in Bangladesh, with incidents blamed on overcrowding, and sad upkeep and security standards in the nation’s many shipyards. Vessels generally sink in dreadful weather.
In June 2020, dozens of people had been killed when a ship carrying about 50 people capsized near Dhaka.
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