SUKKUR May 12: A boy and 300 cattlehead were burnt to death, 30 persons injured and about 200 houses and huge stock of wheat gutted when fire broke out in Haji Mohammad Umer Kandrani village near Thul, Jacobabad district on Monday morning.

Fire brigade of Thul taluka council reached the spot but in the state of being out of order.

The taluka officials asked the Jacobabad district administration to send the fire brigade which reached the village when fire had devastated it.

In the meantime, the villagers tried to extinguish the fire on their own but failed to do so.

The boy, Gul Mohammed, son of Dil Murad Mari, who was sleeping in a room, was burnt to death as the inmates of his house failed to rescue him despite hectic efforts.

A huge stock of wheat kept outside the village was also gutted. According to the villagers, over 50,000 maunds of wheat turned into the ashes.

They said that 30 persons, who were trying to control the fire and to save the live of children and women, were injured.

Those injured included Bukhsh Ali, Mohammad Bukhsh, Zahid Bukhsh, Ali Murad, Sabz Ali, Amir Bukhsh, Majeed, Pir Bukhsh, Ghulam Nabi, Behram, Abdul Razzaq, Bahadur, Manzoor, Arz Mohammad, Latif, Mehrab, Jafer, Abdul Khaliq, Banhon, Abdul Majeed, Lal Khan, Aachar and Khawand Bukhsh.

According to the villagers, a man threw a live match stick toward the wheat stock as a result fire broke out and engulfed the entire village in an hour.

Majority of the villagers were sleeping in the hot afternoon when the incident occurred.

They complained that firing fighting staff from Jacobabad reached the village after three and a half hours though driving distance between the village and Jacobabad was only that of half an hour.

Half of the village population, which is about 3,500 people, was sitting under the sky in a temperature of 45 degrees Celsius after the fire had rendered them shelterless.