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Two Emirati officials watch as a fire spreads up the side of a high-rise building in Ajman. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
A HUGE blaze engulfed at least two residential towers in the northern UAE emirate of Ajman on Monday, local media said.
The fire erupted at a building in the Ajman One residential cluster of 12 towers and spread to at least another tower, Gulf News daily reported on its website.
Ajman police said one pregnant woman was taken to hospital after suffering breathing difficulties, while five people were treated at the scene for minor injuries.
Fire and smoke billow from a high-rise building in Ajman, United Arab Emirates.Source:AP
Residents were evacuated and police said the blaze was brought under control.
The Emirati interior minister, Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, rushed to Ajman to help co-ordinate the response to the blaze, Ajman police said.
A resident told AFP that the fire, near the coastline, was fanned by a strong wind.
Local media said residents were being evacuated as fire brigades struggled to contain the blaze.
Social media users shared images of the fire late on Monday showing bright yellow flames spreading up the side of a building as chunks of burning material tumbled to the ground.
Two Emirati officials watch as a fire spreads up the side of a high-rise building in Ajman.Source:AP
Ajman is home to many commuters who work in the Gulf commercial hub of Dubai, further to the south.
Like Dubai, it is one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE federation.
Bismillah, a Pakistani tenant of tower 8 in the complex said her three children rushed down 19 floors to safety.
Debris fall from a high-rise building as a fire spreads up the side of the building in Ajman,Source:AP
Tenants gathered around the complex as the buildings burned.
“We are all very distraught. We have lost everything,†she told Gulf News.
The UAE has been challenged by a series of tower fires.
Miraculously no-one was killed when a fire broke out in a luxury 63-storey hotel near Dubai’s tallest building during 2016 New Year’s celebrations.
The Address Downtown hotel, which is just a few blocks from the iconic Burj Khalifa, lit up three hours before midnight injuring 16 people.
In February, a huge fire gutted one of the emirate’s tallest buildings, destroying luxury flats in the Torch tower and triggering an evacuation of nearby blocs in the Dubai Marina neighbourhood.
In November last year, a massive blaze engulfed three residential blocs in central Dubai and led to services on a metro line being suspended, although no one was hurt.
In October, another fire broke out in a high-rise residential tower in the Emirati city of Sharjah.
In 2012, a massive blaze gutted the 34-storey Tamweel Tower in the nearby Jumeirah Lake Towers district.
It was later revealed to have been caused by a cigarette butt thrown into a bin.
Building and safety experts have attributed the spate of fires to a material commonly used to cover the buildings known as aluminium composite panel cladding. Some panels used in buildings in the Emirates contain a flammable core that can burn rapidly one ignited, allowing fires to spread quickly on buildings covered top to bottom with the panels without sufficient fire breaks along the way.
It was not immediately clear if the skyscraper in the Ajman fire had that type of cladding, but images posted on social media appeared to show the fire burning in a similar fashion.