RAWALPINDI: The death toll from a massive fire that gutted Gakkhar Plaza, major shopping mall in Rawalpindi has risen to 14, with six others still missing, officials said on Sunday.
The body of the latest victim of the fire was recovered on Monday morning.

Earlier, rescuers were combing through the debris in search of survivors at Ghakhar Plaza, which partially collapsed 12 hours after the blaze erupted in the early hours of Saturday, deputy city commissioner Haseeb Athar told reporters.
‘The incident has resulted in 13 confirmed deaths so far and 59 injuries, while six are still missing,’ the national disaster management authority said in a statement.
Twelve of the injured were still in hospital receiving treatment, the authority said.
Eighty per cent of the complex was destroyed, the agency said, estimating it would take up to a week to clear the rubble from the site in the centre of town.
‘The rescue work is still continuing and we hope to find more people alive,’ Rawalpindi deputy city commissioner Haseeb Athar said.

A fireman Sajjad Khurshid was killed after being trapped in the building collapse, the fire department said.

Among the injured victims, six were fire crew from Rescue 1122 and another one a police official.

The huge fire is believed to have erupted in the building at around 3am on Saturday in the ground floor of the building and shortly it engulfed the entire structure. However, investigation has been launched to ascertain the real cause of the fire.
The blaze damaged the building structure, which was built in 1980s – apparently by violating building by-laws by a former Pakistan Peoples Party federal state minister Raja Shahid Zafar.

The building having no proper fire extinguishing system and emergency exits, contained hundreds of peddlers sell clothes, cosmetics, jewellery, and various kinds of commodities.

Clouds of thick black and grey smoke could be seen from far away. Sirens blaring ambulances and fire fighters remained engaged for more than 16 hours in extinguishing the flames and shifting the victims to hospitals.

There were loud bangs going off, which could be electric generators because most of the shopkeepers in the building had been using electric generators during load shedding.

A few of the relatives and friends of those who they said were inside the building and giving no response on their mobile phones were seeing sobbing outside.

‘Zeeshan had been calling me from inside and asking me to rescue him,’ his helpless brother Naveed said.

A witness said: ‘I am watching it now and I think it is going to collapse because cracks have started appearing in the building. It is an inferno. There will be no market and shoppers now.’

Police placed cordons around the building and advised the people to avoid the area as fire fighters were struggling to control the inferno.

Shopkeepers on the Bank Road were forced to close their shops and leave the area and surrounding roads were closed which caused traffic chock.

‘When I saw the fire and clouds of smoke coming out of the shops, my first thoughts were for the livelihoods of the people who works there and runs their business,’ a witness Asif Bashir said.

He said there were explosions and then the fire grew rapidly to a scale on such a point that the building would be impossible to save.

The dead were identified as Waqas Abbasi, Nadeem Kiani 18 whose body was charred and Mansoor Raja (a caretaker of the building).

An old time citizen said he had never seen such a huge fire and heavy loss of property in his life in the city.

Another citizen termed it as a ‘great tragedy a heavy loss’ and accused the civic authorities for negligence as there was no proper fire extinguishing system and emergency exits in the building.
Plaza owner Shahid Zafar, a former federal minister, told a private television channel that the blaze had caused millions of dollars in losses to shopkeepers.