The
blaze broke out at night in a residential building that had flammable material
stored on the ground floor.
Members
of a bridal party are thought to be among the victims. It is not yet clear what
started the fire.
The
centuries-old Chawkbazar district has narrow streets and buildings very close
to each other.
Large
building fires are relatively common in densely populated Bangladesh, owing to
lax safety regulations and poor conditions. Hundreds of people have been killed
in recent years.
On Sunday, a fire in a slum in the coastal city of Chittagong killed
at least nine people.
The fire broke out in a
mixed-use building at 23:40 local time (17:40 GMT) on Wednesday, when many
residents were sleeping.
It
started at a chemical warehouse on the ground floor and then raced through
three other buildings, officials say. Many people were trapped, unable to
escape the flames.
Witnesses
and police said gas explosions helped fuel the blaze.
Mohammad Firoz, who
sells cosmetics in Chawkbazar, said 25 of his friends and relatives were
missing and that he feared his brother was dead.
He
said he had seen an electricity transformer explode, causing a minibus parked
below to catch fire. Its gas cylinder then exploded, causing a blaze in a
nearby chemical shop.
"The
flames spread so quickly," he told the BBC's Bengali service. He said his
brother, Hira, who worked in a nearby pharmacy, closed the shutters of the shop
after one of the explosions, fearing there had been a bombing. "I fear he
died inside the shop, I am still searching for his dead body."
Haji
Abdul Kader, whose shop was destroyed, said he had "heard a big
bang". He told AFP news agency: "I turned back and saw the whole
street in flames. Flames were everywhere."
The death toll stood at
78, Dr Sohail Mahmoud, head of the department of forensic medicine at Dhaka
Medical College, told reporters.
"Up
to now, we have 67 bodies in our mortuary and the hospital morgue has 11 dead
bodies," he said.
Victims
included people outside the buildings, some guests at a restaurant and members
of a bridal party, AFP reports. Most of the bodies were charred beyond
recognition.
Some
of the injured were in critical condition. The number of victims is expected to
rise as the search continues through the damaged buildings.
Firefighters fought for
more than five hours to put out the blaze, hindered by narrow streets and a
lack of water sources.
Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her shock over the tragedy and conveyed
condolences to those affected, the Dhaka Tribune reports.
Chawkbazar is one of the
most important areas in Old Dhaka, a historic district established about 400
years ago during the Mughal dynasty.
It
is a hub of chemical businesses and local perfume factories, though authorities
banned the storage of chemical goods after a deadly fire in 2010.
The
streets are packed with rickshaws, small cars and people walking around during
the day. The lanes are so narrow that passenger buses cannot get through.
Electrical,
telephone and internet cables hanging above the narrow lanes pose a real
danger. But the most serious threat comes from the fact that residential
buildings are used for commercial purposes, with ground floors serving as
chemical and gas cylinder warehouses.
In
June 2010, a blaze in the Nimtali district killed 124 people, a fire that was
also made worse by the presence of an illegal chemicals warehouse.
After
that incident, a committee suggested the removal of all chemicals warehouses
from residential areas, but critics say no significant steps have been taken in
the years since.
Just one week ago,
authorities announced a campaign to identify illegal chemical business in old
Dhaka. Similar campaigns have been conducted in the past but none of them were
particularly successful.
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