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A devastating fire broke out at a building of the Bangladesh Secretariat, the administrative headquarters of the government, in the capital Dhaka, gutting offices and documents of five ministries on early Thursday.

- Offices, documents of 5 ministries, including those under Nahid, Asif, gutted 
- Source, cause of fire yet to be determined
- Five committees formed
- Primary report in three days: Rizwana
- Four floors of building 7 damaged 
- Fire doused after 10 hours

Nineteen units of the Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence doused the fire in 10 hours while one firefighter was killed in a road accident during operations to extinguish the fire and four others received injuries.

According to witnesses’ accounts, the fire originated at the west side of the building at about 2:00am and just after that fire was also seen at the east side of the building.

The offices of posts and telecommunications adviser Nahid Islam and local government and youth and sports adviser Asif Mahmud Sajib Bhuiyan were located at the two sides of the building.

The offices and documents of the three ministries were gutted completely in the incident.

Allegations surfaced that it was an act of ‘sabotage’.

The offices and documents of the two other ministries — labour and employment, and road transport and bridges — were damaged and these offices along with the three others would be relocated to other locations temporarily, said adviser Asif Mahmud.

The source and reason of the fire were yet to be determined till filing the report.

Replying to a question about fire at two spots at the same time, the interim government’s spokesperson, environment adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan, at a press conference urged reporters to share video footages they had taken just after the incident  happened with the probe committee to help them.

This incident must need an appropriate and detailed investigation, she said, adding that they would take steps to prevent this type of incident in the future after getting the probe report.

She also said that at an urgent meeting chaired by the chief adviser on the day, a decision was made that a high-powered committee would submit a primary report on the fire incident in the next three days.

This committee will find out the source and reasons of the incident, she added.

With this, the government formed a total of five committees probing the incident.

In a press release, adviser Asif Mahmud said that, ‘The person or people who were involved in this conspiracy hatched to fail us will not be spared.’

‘We were working to identify the corruption and embezzlement of funds in the local government ministry,’ he said, adding, ‘We have found evidences of embezzlement of several thousand crores of taka.’

The fire originated on the sixth floor of the Building No 7 at 1:52am on Thursday, as per a statement issued by the Fire Service and Civil Defence media cell.

Home adviser Lieutenant General (retired) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, however, at a press briefing after visiting the building in the morning said that the fire was originated at about 1:50am and then it spread to upper floors.

The fire services were informed at 1:52am and they started their work at 1:54am, he added.

As per the media cell, the fire spread from the 6th floor to the 9th floor of the building.

The blaze was fully doused at about 11:45am, after 10 hours of efforts by 19 firefighting units with 211 officers and employees from 12 fire stations in Dhaka while members of the Bangladesh Army also helped them.

Video footages captured by different officials showed completely burnt office rooms, corridors and lifts of these four floors.

Burnt documents and broken windows were also seen in the footages.

Several members of the fire service told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that they had to face various obstacles while putting out the fire.

‘There are only two gates out of the five gates for fire service vehicles to enter the Secretariat. We had to break one of the gates for the fire service vehicle to enter,’ said a fire service official.

After the incident, the officials and employees of ministries were let inside the Secretariat at about 10:00am.

The journalists and other guests were not allowed to go inside the Secretariat on the day.

Some of the officials of the affected ministries said that they were not allowed to go inside their offices as the fire services did not give them security clearance.

The director general of the fire service, Brigadier General Muhammad Jahed Kamal, said at a press conference at the Secretariat that the cause of the devastating fire was yet to be known.

He said that the eighth and ninth floors suffered the most damages, and important documents stored there might be destroyed.

At the press briefing held at the Foreign Service Academy on Thursday evening, adviser Rizwana said that the government was taking the matter very seriously as it is the matter of security of the Secretariat where many important state documents were kept.

Replying to a question about taking a long time to douse the fire, she said that before receiving probe report they could not answer the question.

The briefing was attended by adviser Asif Mahmud, adviser Jahangir Alam and the chief adviser’s press secretary, Shafiqul Alam.

Adviser Asif said that they would be able to recover the documents of youth and sports ministry as these were online based but the local ministry’s documents were file based.

‘We have formed a committee to find out how many documents we could recover,’ he said.

Replying to another question, Rizwana said that if they had intelligence information, the government would have taken steps beforehand.

Home adviser Jahangir Alam said that they were collecting CCTV footages of the inside of the building.

Farooq-e-Azam, adviser to the liberation war affairs and disaster management ministries, said that everyone was worried due the incident of fire at such a protected area like the Secretariat.

Md Sowanur Zaman Nayan, a firefighter, was killed after he was hit by a speeding truck while he was crossing the road to connect water pump lines.

The fire service said that their four other members were slightly injured in the fire incident.

The high-powered eight-member committee is headed by the home ministry senior secretary and the fire service and civil defence director general is the member secretary.

The committee also includes three members from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology as explosive experts.

Besides the investigation committee, four other probe committees were also formed by the labour ministry, Local Government Division and Rural Development and Co-operatives Division.

The fire incident at the Secretariat was not an isolated event but a ‘calculated conspiracy’, said Mostafa Jamal Haider, a leader of the 12-Party Alliance, reports the United News of Bangladesh.

In a press release, the Bangladesh Administrative Service Association condemned the incident and demanded justice through a fair investigation.