Health Minister Dr Samanta Lal Sen on Friday said at least 46 people were killed in the devastating fire in a commercial building at Bailey Road area in the capital on Thursday night.

"The death toll in the deadly inferno originated in a multi-storey commercial building in city's Bailey Road last night reached 46...even the condition of the injured people, now undergoing treatment at hospitals, are critical", he told journalists at Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in the morning of Friday.

The minister added: "We are trying our level best for saving their lives...now we will hold a meeting with the physicians to manage the situation."

He said the government will bear all the costs for the treatment of the injured people.

"Today, the Prime Minister talked to me around 6:45am. She gave directives to take all-out measures for treatment," he said.

The Prime Minister said she took the reasonability of all injured people, Samanta Lal added.
   
Earlier, the minister visited the injured patients at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital's Burn and Plastic Surgery Unit and Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery.

Fire service officials said they salvaged some 75 people, including 42 in an unconscious state from the scene, a seven-storey building.

The fire broke out around 9:50pm at the building where some restaurants and a readymade garments shop were housed.

Witnesses and officials said the panicked people tried to rush upstairs to be chased by the blaze as well while the firefighters rescued many of them using ladders.