DHAKA: Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds were injured after a massive fire swept through a shipping container depot in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said on Sunday, as the government launched an investigation into the incident.  

The fire broke out on Saturday evening at a container facility in Sitakunda, located about 40 kilometers from the port city of Chittagong. The initial blaze triggered multiple chemical explosions that were still spreading as of Sunday afternoon.

The death toll had reached 49 and hundreds more were injured, officials said, with the number of casualties still expected to rise as hundreds of firefighters struggled to bring the fire under control.

“The number of casualties is increasing every hour. Until this afternoon, 49 people died, including 10 firefighters. More than 200 people were injured in the fire incident,” Faruque Hossain Shikder, assistant director of Chittagong’s Fire Service and Civil Defense, told Arab News.

Mohammad Dulal Miah, a deputy director of Bangladesh’s Fire Service and Civil Defense Department, said that the depot stored about 5,000 containers and that the site was still covered in black smoke on Sunday.

“We have yet to put out the fire. It’s spreading from one container to another and causing explosions,” Miah told Arab News.

“The cause of the fire is yet to be determined. But the nature of the explosions suggests that there might be some mixture of chemicals stored in the containers.”

Members of the Bangladesh Army have also been called in to assist the firefighters, while Minister for Shipping Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury announced the launch of an investigation into the incident.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has instructed authorities to use helicopters to transport severely injured people for treatment in the capital, Dhaka.

Though Bangladesh has a prospering garment industry, it also has a history of industrial disasters, including factories catching fire with workers trapped inside. Monitoring groups have often blamed lax regulations and poor enforcement for those incidents.

The country’s worst industrial disaster took place in 2013, when the Rana Plaza garment factory located outside Dhaka collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. Just last year, a huge blaze that engulfed a food and beverage factory outside the capital killed at least 52 people, many of whom were trapped inside by an illegally locked door.

ATHENS: Greece’s coast guard continued to search for four missing migrants off the island of Mykonos on Sunday after rescuing another 108 migrants on a sailboat that sent a distress signal late on Saturday, officials said. A coast guard vessel located the sailboat about 1.8 nautical miles southeast of Delos, a small island near Mykonos. The sailboat was taking in water and was towed safely to a Mykonos port. Mykonos is a popular island in the Aegean sea known for its vibrant nightlife. The nationality of the 108 rescued migrants, among them 24 women and 21 children, had not yet been determined, coastgurad officials said. None wore life vests. “Once more, Greece’s coast guard saved lives that ruthless migrant trafficker rings expose to fatal danger without any protection measures,” said Greek Shipping Minister Yannis Plakiotakis. Greece is the main route into the European Union for asylum-seekers arriving from Turkey. The number of arrivals has fallen sharply since 2016 after the EU and Ankara agreed a deal to stop migrants from crossing to Greece.

JAKARTA: Meena Asadi fought against all odds to chase her dreams of being a professional karate athlete. 

She was 13 years old and living in a refugee camp in Pakistan when she first decided to learn the martial art. After fleeing violence in Afghanistan with her family, Asadi was driven to break gender barriers in sports. 

“When I saw boys playing sports freely, I asked myself: ‘Why couldn’t I do that?’” Asadi told Arab News in an interview. “It motivated me to start karate professionally.” 

Asadi’s passion for karate has guided her life journey since, even over a decade later in Cisarua, a West Java town south of Jakarta, where she now teaches the art to fellow refugees. 

Asadi returned to Afghanistan in 2011 but had to leave the country again due to violence and war. She arrived in Indonesia in 2015, where she has lived for years under increasing uncertainties over the future. 

“In Indonesia, refugees live without even the most basic human rights. We consider ourselves forgotten,” Asadi said. “We all suffer from depression and psychological damage.” 

Indonesia, which is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and mainly serves as a transit country, is host to more than 13,000 refugees, many of whom have languished in the archipelago nation for years as they await resettlement in a third country. 

As refugees in the Southeast Asian country find themselves further trapped in uncertainties, without the right to work and with only limited access to education, Asadi has been using karate to help them reduce their anxiety and find hope. 

“Karate helps them to be physically and mentally strong. When they wear a karate uniform, they forget that they are homeless,” she said. 

“This is how their stress decreases and they become hopeful.” 

Asadi, who is a black belt in karate, won three silver medals at the 2010 South Asian Games. 

She started the Cisarua Refugee Shotokan Karate Club in 2016 and now trains 40 students three times a week for two hours per session. Her youngest student is 7 years old, while her oldest is in his 50s. They are refugees from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan. More than half are girls. 

The club in Indonesia, which the 29-year-old sustains with the help of local and foreign donations, was not her first, as she had started one back in Afghanistan not long after she returned to Kabul as an adult. 

“You can just imagine being the one girl who is a karate coach in Afghanistan; people don’t want you to do sports,” she said. 

“If a girl opens a karate club for boys and girls, she will find many enemies, which is something I was faced with. That is why I escaped and came here — to save my life.”

Throughout her life, Asadi has faced many barriers in pursuing her karate dreams, from family members who did not believe in her to the persistent violence in her home country. 

Though she is thankful for the hospitality she has received from Indonesia, Asadi said that refugees in the transit country are akin to prisoners. 

“We are prisoners here. Our crime is that we escaped from violence and survived. We have been living without basic human rights for years,” Asadi said.  

As the world commemorates World Refugee Day on Monday, Asadi hopes that resettlement is in the near future for herself and her community. 

“The world must open its doors to the refugees trapped in Indonesia,” she said. “They should be resettled as soon as possible because refugees are talented and skilled people.”

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s military fired warning shots against “an unruly mob” after the group tried to break a queue at a petrol station, authorities said on Sunday, amid unprecedented lines for fuel that have been seen across the country struggling with its worst economic crisis in memory.

The island nation of 22 million people has lacked the foreign currency to buy essential imports and has defaulted on a multimillion-dollar foreign debt payment last month. As it seeks a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the country is facing extreme shortages of basic necessities, with its existing stock of fuel projected to run out in days.

Some Sri Lankans had been waiting for days on end in queues to fill up their vehicles when an incident broke out in Vishwamadu, about 365 km north of Colombo, at a petrol station in the area on Saturday evening.

“The problem started at the petrol station. There was confusion as some were trying to break the queue,” Nihal Thalduwa, Sri Lanka police spokesperson, told Arab News. 

The army and the police tried to maintain order at the fuel distribution point, Thalduwa said, adding that two civilians and three army officers were injured in the clash.

Military officers fired warning shots when the “unruly mob” tried to provoke them by pelting glass bottles and stones, a spokesperson said.

“An orchestrated attempt by an unruly mob, most of whom were confirmed drunk, to provoke army personnel manning a guard point in the Vishwamadu area in Mullaitivu was thwarted by firing several warning shots to the air,” army Spokesperson Nilantha Premaratne told Arab News.

The army said initial investigations confirmed that the incident was a deliberate attempt “to sabotage the goodwill and the cooperation that prevail between members of the Security Forces and the general public.”

Armed police and troops have been deployed to guard fuel stations in Sri Lanka for months, and Premaratne said the same operations will continue.  

“Since the situation is normal, we continue with the same number of armed officers,” he said.

The crisis has led the government to declare a two-week shutdown of state institutions starting Monday in a bid to conserve fuel, while the Ministry of Education has ordered schools in the capital city to close for at least one week.

As the country faces a record high inflation of nearly 40 percent and lengthy blackouts, the long queues at petrol stations across the country also persisted. Among those who had to endure the long wait is Ashfaque Ahamed, who had to queue for about 23 hours over the weekend.

“I took turns to go to the washroom and for our meals with others in the queue,” Ahamed told Arab News. “It was a terrible experience in my life. I lost my day’s wage of LKR5,000 ($13.90), and I am so exhausted.”

LONDON: A Muslim man who was murdered in a terrorist attack in London is to be remembered at a service at the site five years after his death.

Makram Ali, 51, was killed when a hired van was driven into a crowd outside the Muslim Welfare Center in Finsbury Park after Ramadan prayers on June 19, 2017.

The driver, Darren Osborne, originally from Cardiff, had traveled from Wales to commit the attack, which injured 12 other people. He was subsequently found guilty of terrorism-related offenses and jailed for life in February 2018.

The service is set to be attended by family members, including Ali’s daughter, Ruzina Akhtar, and members of the local Muslim community.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said: “On the fifth anniversary of the awful Finsbury Park terror attack, we remember Makram Ali, who tragically lost his life, and all the innocent Londoners who were injured after being deliberately targeted while leaving their mosque following Ramadan prayers.

“Our thoughts are with Makram’s family and everyone who was impacted by this dreadful attack.

“London stands united against terrorism,” Khan added. “We will always celebrate and cherish the incredible diversity of our city.

“That senseless attack five years ago was an assault on our shared values of openness, freedom and respect, but the solidarity shown by all communities in our city in the wake of the attack showed that we will never let terrorists win by dividing us.”

LONDON: A giant puppet designed to highlight the plight of child refugees embarked on a tour of England on Sunday and will visit landmark destinations as part of World Refugee Week.

Little Amal, the giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, became an international symbol of human rights after she journeyed from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester last July. Amal means “hope” in Arabic.

This year, the 3.5m puppet began her New Steps New Friends tour in Manchester, where she will be the special guest at the Manchester Day Parade with thousands of children and families all celebrating in the city.

She will visit 10 towns and cities across England to share her resilient and hopeful message: “Don’t forget about us.”

Artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi said: “It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it.

“Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. 

“Little Amal is 3.5 meters tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger,” Zuabi said. 

After participating in the Manchester Day Parade, Amal will go on to visit Bradford, Leeds and the Liverpool docks. She will also meet communities in Birmingham, Cheltenham and Bristol’s historic Old City and Harbour.

She will return to the Southbank Centre in London and visit Stonehenge before finishing her journey on the beach in Folkestone in Kent.

In May, Amal landed in Poland, bringing aid relief packages for Ukrainian refugee children and their families.

“The machine of war is faceless, it’s metal grinding metal, but victims of the battles grownups fight have names and children are often the worst victims. That’s why Amal went to Ukraine. She’s a big girl so she can remind us there are many Amals and many Annas and many Andriys and many Abduls,” Zuabi said.

In September 2022, Amal will travel to New York City. She will travel through all five boroughs, meeting artists, civic leaders, community groups and New Yorkers of all backgrounds.