DHAKA: At least
10,000 people are homeless after a massive fire swept through a crowded slum in
the Bangladesh capital and destroyed thousands of shanties, officials said
yesterday. The fire broke out at in Dhaka's Mirpur neighborhood late on Friday
and razed around 2,000 mostly tin shacks, fire services official Ershad Hossain
said. "I could not salvage a single thing. I don't know what will I
do," 58-year-old Abdul Hamid, who ran a tea stall inside the slum, told
AFP as he broke down in tears.

Authorities
eventually got the blaze under control and no-one was killed, although several
people had minor injuries, firefighters said. Many residents - largely
low-income garment factory workers - were not in the slum as they had left
their homes to celebrate the Muslim Eid Al-Adha holiday with their families.
"Otherwise, the damage would have been bigger," local police chief
Golam Rabbani said.

Around 10,000
people have taken refuge in crammed camps at nearby schools closed for the
weeklong holiday, according to Hossain. "We are providing them with food,
water, mobile toilets, and electricity supply," municipal official Shafiul
Azam said, adding that authorities were trying to find permanent accommodation.
Some families have erected tarpaulins to shelter them from bouts of rain during
the monsoon season, but the wet conditions have turned the fields muddy.

Experts say fires
are frequent in Dhaka due to lax safety measures. At least 100 people have been
killed so far this year in building fires across the densely populated
metropolitan city. In 2012, a fire swept through a nine-storey garment factory
near Dhaka killing 111 workers. An investigation found it was caused by
sabotage and that managers at the plant had prevented victims from escaping. A
2010 fire in Nimtoli, one of the most densely populated districts of the
capital, killed 123 people.  AFP