Passengers became aware of the fire around 3 a.m. and were forced to jump into the river.
The massive fire on a large passenger ship in the district of Jhalokathi, in southern Bangladesh, left at least 36 people dead and more than a hundred injured on Friday, a new tragedy that focuses on the precariousness and security failures of the shipping in this nation.
The boat carrying between 700 and 800 passengers caught fire around 03:30 local time (21:30 GMT Thursday) on the Sugandha River in the town of Jhalokathi, about 275 kilometers from Dhaka, when the boat was He was heading from the Bangladeshi capital to the Barguna district.
The administrative leader of the southern region of Jhalokathi, Mohammad Zohor Ali, told Efe that rescue teams have recovered 36 bodies so far.
“Almost a hundred injured have been sent to hospitals. We still do not know exactly how many passengers were traveling in the boat, we have different testimonies from different people. At the moment we assume that between 700 and 800 passengers were traveling on board,” Ali added.
An official from the fire department of the southern region of Barisal, Faizul Haque, told Efe that the reasons that unleashed the virulent fire are still unknown.
Some survivors, who related their experiences to local television channels, assured that the fire originated in the engine room.
Night of horror
The deputy director of the region’s fire department, Kamal Uddin, told Efe that it was a three-story ship and that the ongoing rescue operation was hampered by heavy fog.
“It was fully charged on a Thursday night. The passengers told us that there were several hundred people inside, ”he told Efe by phone from the scene of the accident.
At least thirty of the bodies found were charred inside the boat, while villagers and coastguards recovered the other bodies, Kamal said.
“A lot of people got off the boat to survive. We don’t know if even more people died that way. We sent 74 wounded to hospitals. Villagers also rescued other survivors, ”he said.
The testimony
Sourav Ahmed Ashiq, a lawyer who was traveling on the boat, explained to Efe that passengers became aware of the fire around three in the morning and were forced to jump into the river.
“We were three friends traveling together in a cabin on the third floor. When we saw the fire, we woke up the people in the nearby cabin. I called 999, the police said they would send a fire service, “he said, still terrified.
Standing on the deck, and surrounded by the desperate crowd, the man and his companions jumped from the boat “without knowing where to swim,” said Ashiq, who recalled how several women left the ship with their children tied behind their backs.
“In that jump I left everything, my luggage, laptop, just trying to protect a phone so that if something happened to me my family would know,” he continued.
In the water, in the middle of the darkness and the fog, “we saw a light (…) and we swam in that direction. The locals rescued us and gave us dry clothes, and tea. They took me to a hospital because I had breathed smoke, I’m still traumatized, “he confessed.
Maritime accidents such as sinking and ship collisions are prevalent in the country, where hundreds of waterways, including the Ganges Delta rivers such as the Brahmaputra, Padma and Meghna, are commonly used for transportation.
In most cases, these accidents can be attributed to overloading and poor condition of the boats, but fires are relatively rare.
According to the Bangladesh Passenger Welfare Association, a total of 313 people died and 371 remain missing in 183 accidents on the country’s waterways in 2020.
One of the latest accidents with the most victims took place last August, when at least 22 people died when a boat capsized in a fluvial area connected to a river in the east of the country. (I)
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