Chinese warehouse at Dasu Dam site gutted

PESHAWAR: A pre-dawn blaze ruined a warehouse complex of a Chinese company for the Dasu hydropower project in the Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.”It was a huge fire,” a Rescue 1122 official at the site told AFP on Tuesday.

“Initially, the flames were very high and we had to call out fire brigades from two other districts. It was quite a big storehouse, and apart from oil drums, stationery and machinery were also stockpiled there. That´s all been gutted,” he added.

The construction contract for the Dasu Dam had been awarded to the Gezhouba Group Company in 2017. The camp housed Chinese engineers, surveyors and mechanics, but both police and Rescue 1122 said none were injured or killed. One police official said an electrical fault was the suspected cause of the fire. In July 2021, 12 people — including nine Chinese workers — were killed aboard a bus carrying staff to the Dasu site, with Beijing insisting it was a bomb attack.