More than 80 people are still missing in Pakistan, where there are already 26 deaths due to fire

Islamabad.- The search operation for 83 people missing in the shopping center of the Pakistani city of Karachi that caught fire last weekend continues this Tuesday, in which rescuers have reported that the death toll from the fire has reached 26 people. "The death toll has reached 26 and there are 83 missing", Muhammed Atiq, spokesman for the rescue service of the Edhi Foundation, a civil organization that functions as an emergency support service in Pakistan, told EFE this Tuesday.

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The fire at the Gul Plaza shopping center, a multi-story building in the busy city of Karachi, started last Saturday night and firefighters were unable to extinguish it until more than 24 hours later. According to the rescuers' spokesperson, the ground floor and the first floor of the building have already been cleared and work is now focused on the second and third floors of the building. The fire, the most serious to occur in Karachi, which is the most populous city in Pakistan with more than 18 million inhabitants according to the latest Pakistani census, destroyed a complex that housed around 1,200 stores, mostly cosmetics, clothing and plastics. Yesterday, rescuers proceeded to cool the structure of the shopping center to prevent a major collapse and removed debris that was scattered in the street. Although the houses affected by this disaster are still unknown, fires are a common tragedy in Karachi where safety regulations are lax. Defective wiring ("spiderwebs" of cables), informal construction, and lack of emergency exits often turn these markets into death traps. This incident adds to a recent list in the country, including one in July 2024, when a fire ravaged 300 stalls in Islamabad, and a month earlier, another fire destroyed 80 shops next to the train tracks in the city of Peshawar.