10 killed as 5.7 magnitude quake jolts Bangladesh

Dhaka, Nov 21 (PTI) At least 10 people were killed and over a hundred injured as a massive earthquake of magnitude 5.7 jolted Dhaka and parts of the country on Friday, damaging buildings, causing fires at several places and sending panic among residents.

Officials said four of the victims died in the capital Dhaka, five in Narsingdi, the epicentre of the tremor, and one in suburban river port town of Narayanganj.

Media reports suggested that in the industrial town on the outskirts of the capital Gazipur alone, at least 100 workers were injured at different units as they tried to rush out of buildings during the tremor.

The Met office said the epicentre of the quake that struck at 10:38 am (local time) was located some 10 kilometres beneath the surface in Narsingdi, which is around 13 kilometres east of the seismic centre in Dhaka’s Agargaon area.

Dhaka’s Deputy Police Commissioner Mallik Ahsan Uddin Sami said, quoting the fire service, that at least three people were killed after a railing, bamboo scaffolding and debris of a five-storey building fell on them at Old Dhaka’s Armanitola area.

Sami confirmed that one of the deceased was a medical student who was there to buy meat along with his mother. She is critically wounded, requiring an emergency surgery, he added.

One of the dead was an eight-year-old boy while the media quoting the family members said his wounded father also was declared dead later by doctors at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

The reports said among the dead in Dhaka was a 50-year-old private security guard who was killed after a portion of a building’s wall collapsed on him during the earthquake.

Narsingdi district administration in a statement said five people were killed and at least four, including a boy and his father, were critically injured.

In suburban Narayanganj, a baby died and her mother was seriously wounder when a wall collapsed on them.

In Sutrapur’s Swamibagh area, also located in Old Dhaka, an eight-storey building was reported to have leaned against another structure following the earthquake, while at the Kalabagan area, a seven-storey building looked tilted, though fire officials reported it remained structurally sound.

A fire broke out at a residence in Dhaka’s posh Baridhara area soon after the tremor hit, but the firefighters could not immediately confirm if it was linked to the earthquake.

Another fire at a residential building was reported from the Gazaria area of suburban Munshiganj, while the fire service responded immediately to douse the blaze.

Reports of minor cracks appearing in some buildings have also been received from several areas in the capital and its surrounding areas, including Narsingdi.

The reports suggested the quake also damaged buildings and caused fire in suburban Munshiganj, northwestern Rajshahi and southeastern Chattogram.

Experts have long said the risk of major earthquakes was high in Bangladesh because of its location on active tectonic plate boundaries, with many of them saying a major earthquake is inevitable, though it could be decades away.

The meteorology department officials said an earthquake of this magnitude so close to Dhaka has never happened before and feared if it had lasted just 5-7 seconds longer, the number of casualties and building collapses could have increased manifold.

Earthquake expert Professor Mehedi Ahmed Ansary of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) said a tremor with a magnitude of 6 could collapse most structures in the country.

“This tremor (on Friday) is an alarm bell for Bangladesh,” Ansary said. PTI AR GSP GSP