C T Online Desk: The death toll from yesterday’s deadly blast at a Gulistan building rose two 19 as rescuers found two more bodies this afternoon.
Akhtaruzzaman, assistant director of fire service and civil defence, told that the two bodies were recovered from the basement of the seven-storey building.
Describing how the bodies were recovered, Akhtaruzzaman said they had noticed that flies were swarming to one particular area. Then, with the help of search and rescue dogs, they realised that there were bodies in those areas.
“It took over an hour to recover the bodies.”
Around 3:30pm firefighters resumed the rescue operation after getting instructions from engineering sections of respective departments, said Md Zahir, senior station officer at Postogola Fire Station.
The explosion took place around 4:45pm yesterday near a BRTC bus counter.
A five-storey building on the south side of the Gulistan BRTC counter, housing a sanitary shop on the ground floor and Brac Bank office on the remaining floors, and a seven-storey sanitary market building next to it, were affected by the blast. None of the buildings collapsed.
Deputy Director of Fire Service Dinomoni Sharma told the media that the explosion took place in a building at 180/1 Holding, North South Road.
A bus parked on the opposite side of the building was also damaged due to the blast.
