Sixteen people, including three Pakistanis, were killed and nine were injured in a Dubai residential building fire on Saturday, local media said on Sunday.
\nThe fire engulfed the five-storey building in the Al-Ras neighborhood, one of the oldest parts of Dubai and home to many migrant workers and traders, on Saturday afternoon, according to Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.
\nLocal media said the fire had been put out.
\n\u201cPreliminary investigations showed that lack of compliance with building security and safety requirements caused the fire\u201d the National said citing a civil defence statement.
\nNaseer Vatanappally, an Indian social worker who was at the Dubai Police mortuary to help identify the victims on Saturday night, told Gulf News: \u201cSo far, we have managed to identify four Indians, including a couple from Kerala and two men from Tamil Nadu who worked at the building, three Pakistani cousins and a Nigerian woman.\u201d
\nHe said he was coordinating with Dubai Police, the Indian Consulate in Dubai, other diplomatic missions, and friends and relatives of the deceased.
\nThe Foreign Office has yet to issue a statement confirming the deaths.
\nThe Gulf News said that the fire broke out in an apartment located on the fourth floor of the building.
\nIt said that teams from the Port Saeed Fire Station and the Hamriyah Fire Station provided backup to the firefighting operations, adding that the fire was brought under control at 2:42pm after which cooling operations were started.
\nGulf News reported the spokesperson for Dubai Civil Defence (DCD) as saying that urgent medical aid was being provided to the injured while rescue teams were working to put out the fire.
\nIt added that the DCD teams had arrived at the site and had \u201cstarted both evacuation and firefighting operations within six minutes of being notified\u201d.
\nThe spokesperson said preliminary investigations showed that the lack of compliance with building security and safety requirements had caused the fire.
\n\u201cRelevant authorities are conducting a comprehensive investigation to provide a detailed report on the causes of the accident,\u201d the Khaleej Times quoted him as saying.
\nThe publication also quoted an eyewitness as saying that they saw flames billowing out of the building. A worker at a shop in the building told the news outlet that they heard a \u201cloud bang\u201d.
\n\u201cWe couldn\u2019t figure out what was happening for a few minutes. But then we saw smoke and fire coming out of the window,\u201d he told the Khaleej Times.
\n\u201cThere was smoke everywhere and we could not see anything. So we decided to exit the building and wait for the police.
\n\u201cFire engines, firemen and police officers were at the spot within minutes. They brought a crane and started helping people. Their swift action helped save many lives,\u201d the Khaleej Times quoted him as saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sixteen people, including three Pakistanis, were killed and nine were injured in a Dubai residential building fire on Saturday, local media said on Sunday. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6098,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}