Bangladesh shopping mall fire

Seven people died and 50 others were injured during a fire at Bangladesh’s largest shopping mall, Friday, March 13, 2009.

Blaze at Bashundhura City Tower

The dead include six security guards, three of whom were found in an elevator. The seventh was an employee with the mall fire fighting unit who died from injuries in the hospital.

Survivors on the rooftop were rescued by helicopter. Shoppers fled the mall.

The 22 story Basundhara City Complex in Dhaka has more than 2,000 shops and restaurants. It is not known how many were in the mall nor the exact death count. Flames and smoke billowed from the top floors of the mall.

Fifteen fire trucks were dispatched to the fire. Due to high winds and no ladders which would reach the 18th floor, the blazing inferno took between seven to ten hours to extinguish. The fire began in the Basundhara offices on the 18th floor.

Sheikh Hasina wins in the National Assembly of Bangladesh

A general election was held in Bangladesh on 29 December 2008. The two key parties in the election were the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Khaleda Zia, and the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina.

Sheikh Hasina

The Awami League formed a fourteen-party grand alliance (Mohajot) including Ershad’s Jatiya Party, while the BNP formed a four-party alliance which included the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The election was originally scheduled for January 2007, but it was postponed for an extended period due to opposition protests and boycott threats.

The election resulted in a landslide victory for the Awami League led grand alliance, which won 262 seats.

The main rival four-party alliance led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh received only 32 seats, with the remaining 5 going to the other parties and independent candidates. Election in one constituency was postponed due to the death of a candidate.