• Officials say 15 victims identified so far; remains of as many deemed ‘unidentifiable’
• Families protest slow pace of search operation
• Flower shop owner’s negligence blamed for devastating fire
• Only 200 of 1,200 shops had fire extinguishers, meeting told

KARACHI: The death toll in the Gul Plaza fire tragedy rose to 67 on Thursday as remains of six more victims were found in the rubble during a search operation that continued for the sixth day.

South DIG Syed Asad Raza told Dawn that 15 of the 67 bodies had been identified.

Police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed on Thursday issued a list of 67 victims whose bodies had been brought to the Civil Hospital Karachi since January 17.

She told Dawn that six bodies were identified with the help of their facial features, eight through DNA testing and one with the help of his computerised national identity card.

She said that the DNA matching of 37 victims was in process. She said that it would be difficult to identify 15 bodies because DNA extraction was not possible.

A team of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) also visited the plaza. The SBCA team believed that they would demolish the building after completion of the search operation.

Thermal imaging cameras used in search operation

Rescue 1122 spokesperson Hassaan Ul Haseeb Khan told Dawn that urban search and rescue teams were conducting the search operation with the help of thermal imaging cameras (TICs).

“Urban search and rescue teams are working at the incident site and using specialised tools and cutters,” he said.

He said the TIC can detect heat up to 1,500 degrees Celsius. However, the heat inside the building was higher, affecting the remains of the victims.

The spokesperson said they had never experienced such a fire incident in the metropolis in recent times. Despite continued cooling work over the last three days, extreme heat still persisted inside the debris. However, he said they continued to remove debris.

The spokesperson said the structure of the building was dilapidated, so extreme caution was being exercised during the search operation.

He added that there was no way to move inside the building. The rescue workers created confined spaces by cutting the wall, but the action triggered “vibration”. Therefore, the work, which should have been completed within 10-20 minutes, took one to two hours to finish, he said.

‘Fire caused by flower shop owner’s negligence’

Sources familiar with the preliminary findings of a committee tasked with investigating the devastating fire told Dawn that the blaze started from a shop selling artificial flowers on the ground floor due to the alleged negligence of the owner.

They said the shop owner had been traced and interviewed and he told investigators that his two minor sons were playing in the shop while he was away. While playing, they lit a match and threw it into the shop without putting it out before leaving. As a result, the shop caught fire due to the presence of combustible material, the sources added.

An official told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the shop owner’s account was also corroborated by other witnesses.

He said that since it was an accident, the owner or his sons had not been detained.

Meanwhile, officials said that there were no effective fire safety arrangements inside the plaza, as out of 1,200 shops, “only 200” shops had fire extinguishers.

An Edhi Foundation spokesperson in a statement said that three bodies were handed over to relatives after identification.

One victim, Sarfraz, 47, owned a gift shop in the plaza while two others, Mohammed Usman, 24, and Mohammed Rizwan, 24, worked at a crockery and a photo frame shop respectively.

Two of them were residents of Garden and Metroville areas, while the third belonged to Gujranwala.

Also on Thursday, many people, including a large number of women, gathered outside the plaza and staged a protest, criticising the slow pace of the operation.

The protesters said six days had passed, but their children were still buried under the debris, while their mothers had been devastated.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2026