Traders are counting heavy losses after a fire destroyed goods of unknown value in the Gikomba market, Nairobi.
The inferno gutted a section of second-hand clothes locally known as mitumba.
Reports seen by the Standard Gazette say that the fire began thirty minutes past midnight and continued until morning hours.
Nairobi county leadership has been blamed for the delay in response.
“The fire started past midnight and traders who had stocked their bale of clothes did not manage to save them..Until now the fire is still burning despite Nairobi Metropolitan Service coming to the rescue,” stated one of the traders.
The cause of the fire is yet to be established.
Mysterious fires plague the market regularly, with the latest one being February 2020 fire that engulfed the mitumba section.
In April 2019, property worth unknown value was destroyed after a fire whose origin was not known broke out.
In 2018, three cases of fire were reported in the biggest hub for second-hand property in Kenya.
In 2017, a fire broke out in the market twice, and in 2015, Gikomba also caught fire two times.
President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018 ordered investigations into the fires, but none has been arrested in connection with the mysterious incidents.
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