At least nine Bangladeshis have been killed in a furniture shop fire in Riyadh on Monday night, the foreign ministry has confirmed. Seven of them -Md Jalal, Abdul Gaffar, Bahauddin, Shah Alam, Nazir Hossain, Matiur Rahman, and ‘Selim’ –from Comilla’s Titas Upazilla. One Md Akkas was from Madaripur while another Zakir Hossain hailed from Feni district, the ministry’s Director of External Publicity wing Nripendra Chandra Debnath confirmed. He said they used to work in a Bangladesh owned furniture shop ‘Titas Furniture’ near Riyadh which was called ‘Hela’ in Arabic. Of the 15 workers in that shop ,13 were Bangladeshis, he said. Earlier, the Bangladesh ambassador in Riyadh Md Shahidul Islam confirmed the deaths to bdnew24.com but could not identify them as his mission was still working on it. There have been reports that the fire killed 11 people. However, the foreign ministry official said they would give further details once they had it. Few TV channels were reporting that the fire broke out at about 10 pm (Saudi Arabia time).
