Dhaka, 21 Nov

At least four people, including a new-born baby, were killed as a massive earthquake of magnitude 5.7 jolted Dhaka and parts of the country on Friday, damaging buildings, causing fires at several places and sending panic among residents.

Three people were killed in Dhaka while the fourth died in the suburban river port town of Narayanganj, officials said, as local media reported injuries to at least 50 people across the country.

The epicentre of the quake that struck at 10:38 am (local time) was at Narsigndi on the northeastern outskirts of Dhaka at a depth of 10 kilometres, Bangladesh’s meteorology department said. The place is around 13 kilometres east of the seismic centre in Dhaka’s Agargaon area.

Dhaka’s Deputy Police Commissioner Mallik Ahsan Uddin Sami said, quoting the fire service, that at least three people were killed after a railing, bamboo scaffolding and debris of a five-storey building fell on them at Old Dhaka’s Armanitola area.

A bystander was critically wounded at the scene in the crowded neighbourhood, he said.

Sami confirmed that one of the deceased was a medical student who was there to buy meat along with his mother. She is critically wounded requiring an emergency surgery, he added.

Local media reports said one of the three dead was an eight-year-old child yet to be identified.

The fourth death was reported from Narayanganj where a newborn baby on her mother’s lap died as they were walking near a wall that collapsed as the tremor hit.

In Sutrapur's Swamibagh area, also located on old Dhaka, an eight-storey building was reported to have leaned against another structure following the earthquake while at Kalabagan area a seven-storey building looked tilted though fire officials reported it remained structurally sound.

A fire broke out at a residence in Dhaka’s posh Baridhara area soon after the tremor hit but the firefighters could not immediately confirm if it was linked to the earthquake.

Another fire at a residential building was reported from the Gazaria area of suburban Munshiganj while the fire service responded immediately to douse the blaze.

The Prothom Alo newspaper said the tremor wounded over 50 people in three districts around Dhaka.

Experts have long said the risk of major quakes was high in Bangladesh because of its location on active tectonic plate boundaries with many of them saying a major earthquake is inevitable, though it could be decades away.

Earthquake expert Professor Mehedi Ahmed Ansary of Bangladesh University Engineering and Technology (BUET) said, a tremor with the magnitude 6 could collapse most structures in the country.

“This tremor (on Friday) is an alarm bell for Bangladesh,” Ansary said.