KARACHI: Several offices on three floors of the multistorey Finance and Trade Centre (FTC) on Sharea Faisal in Saddar area were destroyed by a huge fire, which was brought under control after several hours early on Sunday morning, according to police and fire brigade officials.

An officer of the fire brigade told Dawn that the blaze erupted on the sixth floor of the building at around 1.45am and 10 fire tenders, two snorkels and one bowser took over six hours to control the raging inferno by 7.10am.

He said the sixth floor was ‘completely destroyed’ by the fire. The exact cause of the blaze and the amount of losses could not be ascertained immediately while police ruled out possibility of sabotage behind the incident.

Saddar police official Mohammad Arshad believed the fire was caused by short-circuit on the sixth floor where offices of National Bank of Pakistan were located and quickly spread to seventh and eighth floor housing offices of Deewan Yusuf firm.

He said that there were about 15 to 20 rooms each on the three floors and believed the offices had sustained extensive damage. Since it was weekly holiday, exact assessment of losses could not be made, he said.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2019