Noakhali school catches fire

A fire at a Noakhali school has destroyed its administrative building, school authorities say. The Shibpur Muslim High School at Noakhali Sadar Upazila caught fire at around 4am on Saturday. Locals initially tried to put out the fire, school’s headmaster AFM Ismail Shibli said. Firefighters finally put out the blaze around 6am but by then the administrative building was completely destroyed, he said. The school library, computer lab, teachers’ room and administration office were housed in the building. Video footage of the fire obtained by bdnews24.com shows the one-storey tin-roofed building is engulfed in flames. Shibli said five wardrobes containing valuable documents, preserved since the inception of the school in 1978, were gutted in the fire. Two multimedia projectors, 10 computers, hundreds of books and over Tk 100,000 in cash were destroyed. School authorities estimate the damage at Tk 50 million. The cause of the fire could not be known immediately.