33 arrested over Asafo Market fire

The police command in the Ashanti Region has arrested 33 suspects in connection with Easter Sunday’s Asafo Market fire that ravaged the entire commercial arena in the regional capital, Kumasi.

The Mayor of Kumasi, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, on Monday, 22 April 2019, told Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show host Benjamin Akakpo in an interview that preliminary investigations by the Ghana National Fire Service point to arson in the Sunday blaze, the second which was just a day apart from an earlier one on Saturday.

The Easter Sunday blaze ravaged the shoe market.

Mr Assibey Antwi said the fire officers who were at the scene told him “in the full glare of the media … that looking at how the fire just started and the level of the magnitude, nothing can drive them away from the suspicion that it was an arson”.

“So, straightaway, I had to inform the Regional Minister about the current occurrences, so, now, the Regional Minister has been informed, tomorrow the MESEC will meet, that is at my level and at the level of the Regional Minister, he will also lead the REGSEC and jointly we all look at what to do to curtail the whole situation because we cannot sit down for three days to have three markets going down”.