January 1, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 27, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 31: Fire broke out on Friday in an underground duct in front of the National Assembly building due to gas leakage, injuring a lineman.

However, a major disaster was averted. Some MNAs were present in the building at the time of the incident.

The fire-fighters arrived at the spot on time and inundated the duct situated near Gate No 5 of the parliament.

“The explosion was so sudden that I could not find time to protect myself,” Ghazi Khan, the injured telephone lineman told Dawn.

“When I entered the duct I felt a pungent smell of gas,” Ghazi Khan said, adding that he first lit a matchstick and put it inside the duct to ascertain whether there was leakage or not, but nothing happened.

He said: “After becoming confident that the duct was safe I entered it to rectify the telephone lines with a small liquid petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder and other tools.”

When I lit the LPG cylinder again to carry out the rectification work, fire erupted, burning my hands and hair.”

He said this was not the first time he smelt gas, saying the entire telephone line ducts right from the Parliament House to Bari Imam were filled with gas.

Meanwhile, the presence of gas remained a mystery as one of the member of the National Assembly’s technical staff, who was present on the site, questioned the chances of leakage inside the duct saying the gas lines were too far from the spot.

The same conclusion was also drawn by the firemen who were extinguishing the fire. There is a strong possibility that the LPG cylinder which the lineman carried along with him was leaking and when he lit it, the gas caught fire as a result of which he was injured, Mohammad Hafiz, a fireman, said.

However, he said the fire was of low intensity, though he was not sure whether the telephone lines had been damaged or not.

Earlier on December 20, fire had erupted in the third floor of the building due to short-circuiting which made Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat order an inquiry.