KARACHI: Two men died and three others fell unconscious after inhaling toxic gases in the Ferozabad area on Saturday afternoon, police and hospital officials said.

They added that five persons fell unconscious when they went inside a toilet of an apartment in Block-2 of PECHS.

They were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where doctors pronounced two of them — Zaheer, 38, and Yaseen, 40 — as dead on arrival, said Dr Seemin Jamali, executive director of the hospital.

Three of them, Hammad Rasheed, 38, Hanif Altaf, and Gul, 38, got admitted for treatment.

Quoting survivors, Ferozabad police officer Zahid Mehmood said that initially Zaheer, who worked as an accountant at a nearby office, went inside the washroom of the building but did not return for several minutes. Yaseen, a plumber of the building, followed him but he also did not return. Then other people also went there who also became unconscious. Two of them died on the spot.

The officer said that the survivors told the investigators that foul smell of gases was emanating from the washroom.

Separately, a couple, identified as Yaqub and Shahnaz, sustained burn wounds when a fire erupted in their home in the Lyari area due to gas leakage.

They were admitted for treatment at the burns centre of Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2020