BEIRUT: Firefighters extinguished a large fire at a furniture store beneath an eight-story apartment building in Beirut Friday under oppressive heat conditions after it raged for six hours.

A Civil Defense official told The Daily Star the fire, which broke out around 6 a.m., was extinguished by midday.

However, smoke continued to come out of the surrounding concrete walls of the ground floor shop, in the Raouche building on Salim Salam Boulevard, and the official said the cooling down process was likely to take hours.

Rescuers used ladders to reach some residents, while others fled to the rooftop to escape the blaze. Among those evacuated by ladder was an elderly disabled man.

No injuries were reported. By 11:30 a.m., more than 100 residents from the Raouche building and nearby buildings had been evacuated, the Civil Defense official said.

It is not yet clear what triggered the blaze at the furniture store.

The Civil Defense official said firefighters had faced difficulty in combating the blaze due to the presence of significant amounts of highly flammable material such as timber, textile and sponge.