Abu Dhabi: Three Bangladeshis, one Indian and two Pakistanis have been identified among the 10 workers who died in the fire in Musaffah Industrial Area in Abu Dhabi on Friday morning, the embassies of the victims told Gulf News on Sunday. The nationalities of the four remaining bodies have to be ascertained.
Of the eight injured, one Bangladeshi and two Indians remain in critical condition.
Mohammad Imran, Bangladeshi Ambassador to the UAE, said that although the authorities have not yet released the names of the deceased, the Bangladesh Embassy believes that they are three workers who lived in the gutted building and were missing after the fire — Salimuddin, a maintenance worker, Abdul Shukkur, a painter and Inamul Haq, an aluminium fabricator. The three men, in their late thirties, were from Chittagong.
Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy said four workers from the northern Indian state of Rajasthan were in the building — one died and three received injuries. Omprakash, a worker with a contracting company, has been identified as the deceased, an embassy official said.
Among the three Indians injured, Man Khan and Navab Khan remain in critical condition.
The third worker — Mohammad Farooq — is recuperating at the hospital. Embassy officials visited the injured at the hospital and provided the required assistance to them. The body of the deceased will be repatriated after the due process, the official said.
Of the three injured Bangladeshi workers, Esmail Hussain, 45, who received 96 per cent burns and is unconscious, is still in a critical condition, said Mohammad Arman Ullah Chowdhury, labour counsellor, Bangladeshi Embassy. The other two are Didarul Alam, who had jumped off the building and sustained severe spinal injuries for which he underwent an eight-hour-long surgery, and Moinuddin, who also received serious injuries and was on life support. Both are under observation.
The Bangladeshi Ambassador said the embassy will take the necessary steps to expedite the repatriation of the bodies.
As Gulf News reported, the fire broke out at the commercial building at 3.44am on Friday. The upper floor of the two-storey structure, initially designed as a warehouse, had been modified into an illegal accommodation with wooden partitions set up in 11 rooms, and witnesses said that more than 115 men lived there. Each inhabitant was reportedly paying about Dh300 for a bed space.
Civil Defence officials said the building was ill-equipped and fell short of a number of safety standards, including the lack of an emergency exit.
