Inside Atia Mahal, panic was all

Panic-stricken families trapped inside Atia Mahal without electricity and gas since early Friday had only thought about getting out of the building alive until they were all safely evacuated by yesterday afternoon.

“Will they [law enforcers] be able to get us out of here? What if the bombs explode?” Kanta, a schoolteacher who lives on the third floor of the building, asked her colleague Nasir Uddin around 2:00am over phone.

Commandos of the army rescued 78 residents from the building by creating a bridge with a ladder of firefighters between Atia Villa and an adjacent four-storey building, said a police officer working there.

Army men began to help the residents come out of the building around 11:15am, he added.

The rescued people were taken to Jahir-Tahir Memorial High School from where they were taken to a two-storey building in Shibbari area. They were asked to stay in the building, sharing rooms with its tenants, until the operation was over.

Shamima Yasmin, a tailor, who lives on the first floor of Atia Mahal with her husband and two daughters aged 12 and 14, told The Daily Star that they had spent the night cowered under the bed.

“My children are so traumatised that they have not been eating anything even after we had come out,” she said.

Shahidul Islam, another resident, was seen trembling and crying in the evening. He said he did not know what was happening until late in the afternoon on Friday. “I began to go downstairs without a clue when a law enforcer asked me to go back. I thought I would never make it outside alive,” was all he could say.

Nasir Uddin and Kanta have another colleague, Piyali Chowdhury, living on the third floor of the building.

“Pray for me and my family,” said Piyali when she called Nasir early yesterday. “How will we survive? We do not even have food for all five of us.”

Piyali lives with her child, husband, mother-in-law and sister-in-law at the rented apartment.

Nazrul Islam, a first-floor resident, told his cousin Azmal Hossain that he was trapped there with his wife and children. As the law enforcers had locked the gate of the building from outside before the day broke on Friday, he said he was barred from getting regular grocery supplies and the family had almost starved the whole day.

The owner of the building, Ustar Mia, urged law enforcers yesterday morning to rescue his tenants first. “Please secure a safe passage for them first. Damage the building, if need be.”

He said he was glad to know that all of them were safely rescued.