A fire that broke out at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) building in Karachi on Monday and led to the suspension of trading activity for around two hours has been brought under control, rescue officials said.

According to Sindh Rescue 1122 spokesperson Hassaan Khan, no loss of life has been reported.

The fire initially broke out on the fourth floor of the Ali Habib Trading Company building on I.I. Chundrigar Road, Khan said. He added that the cooling process of the building had begun as fire brigades reached the spot.

Khan noted that as soon as Rescue 1122’s Central Command and Control received the information, two fire brigade trucks reached the spot to douse the blaze.

He added that one snorkel and a total of six fire brigades had reached the building to extinguish the fire.

Following the fire, trading had been halted at around 10:30am and resumed two hours later near 12:30pm.

Once the fire was brought under control, the KSE-100 index caught proverbial fire, gaining 484 points in intraday trade at around 2pm to reach 80,697 points. The index closed at 80,566.2 by the day’s end, up by 353.41 points or 0.44 per cent.

In February, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation informed the Sindh High Court that it had conducted a fire safety audit of over 265 commercial buildings, and not a single one was found to have a fire safety certificate or a no-objection certificate (NOC) issued by the fire brigade department.

The report, filed on behalf of Metropolitan Commissioner Afzal Zaidi, stated that serious shortcomings had been observed during the audit.

In November, a woman suffered burn injuries after a fire erupted in a multi-story building on I.I. Chundrigar Road.

He said the fire erupted on the third floor of the Business and Finance Centre, adding that the flames spread to the sixth floor. DIG Raza said there were 300 offices in the building with 2,000 employees, who were safely evacuated.