Saudi Arabia: Fire erupts at Jeddah market
Blaze was the second to hit the site this month
Cairo: A massive fire broke out early Sunday at a major market in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Online footage showed plumes of black smoke arising from Souq Al Sawarikh, a popular market in Jeddah.
The civil defence confirmed that a blaze had erupted at the market.
The service added on Twitter that it had extinguished the fire and no casualties resulted.
The pre-dawn fire had hit a number of carpets and household appliances on the site, according to media reports. The cause of the fire is not clear yet.
The blaze was the second to occur at Souq Al Sawarikh this month.
Earlier this month, authorities in the Makkah region, of which Jeddah is administratively a part, said the city’s civil defence personnel had put out a fire in the same market and that there were no casualties.
The cause of that fire, which gutted an unspecified number of shops, was not given.
Al Sawarikh, one of the largest markets in Saudi Arabia, stretches in the south of Jeddah around 1 million square metres, comprising hundreds of shops.
The three-decade-old souq is a Jeddah landmark. It earned its name for being situated in the proximity of a missile (Sawarikh in Arabic) base.
Also known as Harraj, this market usually attracts customers hunting for bargains among its wide range of merchandise.