About 100 hutments were destroyed when a fire broke out at a slum in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi.
No one was injured in the blaze, which began early on Saturday in the dwellings along the Lyari River, in the Teenhatti neighbourhood, according to Inayat Ullah, a senior official at the city’s central fire station.
About 10 fire engines arrived at the scene quickly and managed to extinguish the flames within hours.
It was not immediately known what started the blaze, said Mr Ullah. He said such incidents were common at the start of winter when the poor living in makeshift homes light fires to keep them warm.
A similar fire last year gutted about a hundred of the burlap-and-plastic dwellings in the same neighbourhood, whose residents depend on odd jobs and begging for survival. No one was hurt in that blaze either.
In the latest incident, by daylight, men, women and children of Teenhatti were seen searching for any belongings they could salvage from the ashes.
Karachi is the capital of southern Sindh province, where thousands live in open areas along the Lyari. Some have tin roofs but the majority of the houses are made up of cane, burlap and plastic.
