Dozens killed as blaze engulfs Delhi building
Karn Pratap Singh and Hemani Bhandari
NEW DELHI: At least 27 people were killed when a fire engulfed a three-storey commercial building in West Delhi’s Mundka area on Friday, officials at the site said, adding that they feared more may have died since they were yet to reach all parts of the building and several of the injured were in a critical condition.
The fire started around 4.40pm in a building close to the Mundka metro station, before it appeared to have swallowed the entire structure with approximately 70 people inside. By 11pm, deputy commissioner of police Sameer Garg said 26 bodies had been recovered and close to a dozen were pulled out alive, with health minister Satyendar Jain pegging the number at 27 half an hour later.
“It is difficult to identify even the gender of those who died. The bodies are completely charred. The condition of the injured are critical. The death count will increase,” said a police officer at the Sanjay Gandhi hospital, one of the facilities where the injured were taken.
According to a preliminary assessment, the fire started on the first floor, where 50 people worked and most were rescued, and spread upwards. It was not clear how many were unaccounted for.
A Delhi Police spokesperson announced the arrest of Harish Goel and Varun Goel, the owners of the business that functioned out of the first floor.
Most of the deaths confirmed till the time of going to print took place on the second floor and several of the injured were those who jumped off the building, an official at the site said. Another police staffer said they broke windows to reach some of the survivors.
Till the time of going to print, firefighters were yet to fully put out the blaze, more than seven hours after they first responded. The Mundka blaze is the deadliest since the 2019 factory fire at Anaj Mandi when 43 people were killed. The 27 confirmed fatalities make Friday’s incident the second-deadliest since the 1999 Lal Kuan chemical market fire when 57 people were killed.