Daily Times

The fire broke out in a multi-storey mobile market, Time Centre plaza here in Sadar Bazar on early Friday, gutting around 200 shops.

The damage was estimated to be in millions of rupees as the Rescue-1122 fire-fighting teams could only extinguish 90 percent of the fire in the building till the filing of this news. The police completely sealed Sadar Bazar and got the houses adjacent to the building vacated to avoid any loss of human life.

According to Rescue 1122 Bilal Ahmed Faizi, four shopkeepers got trapped in the building in a bid to take out their mobile phones and other precious electronic gadgets from their shops. The Rescue teams safely evacuated the trapped persons, said the spokesman, adding that over 130 firefighters and 26 fire vehicles, four water containers and four ambulances were participating in the operation.

The fire-fighting officials and vehicles of Rescue-1122 were also called from Peshawar, Mardan, Nowshera, Charsadda and Khyber to extinguish the fire. The fire got wild after explosions of batteries and UPS in the mobile center. The fire that broke out in the mobile market around 3 a.m. turned almost all mobile accessories, mobile phones, furniture and other items in around 200 shops to ashes. The Rescue officials used different means including the use of smoke injectors and heavy machinery to overcome the trapped smoke and cool down the building.

Onlookers including affected shopkeepers flocked to take in the spectacle of the intensity of the fire. The rescue and relief activities were still going on at the scene till the filing of this news.