SUKKUR: Four members of a family died from serious burns and suffocation and six suffered injuries, three serious, when a fire that erupted in a cloth shop on the ground floor of the two-storey edifice engulfed the entire building in Gharibabad at midnight on Thursday.

Mohammad Jawed, his two sons Mohammad Alian and Umar and nephew Hyder Ali died in their sleep while Sohail, Akbari and Zilli Shah who suffered serious burns were shifted to the Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences.

Edhi volunteers and firefighters, who took part in the rescue work and managed to put out the fire, believed the inferno was caused by short circuit in the cloth shop which kept spreading during the night and soon engulfed the house on the first floor.

The bodies were handed over to heirs after conduct of post-mortem examination at Sukkur Civil Hospital. They were later laid to rest in local graveyard in Nawan Goth amid a large number of people including Sukkur Mayor Noman Islam Shaikh.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2020