A fire at a wedding celebration in the district of Hamdaniya in Iraq’s Nineveh province has killed at least 113 people and injured more than 150.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial Governor of Nineveh, cautioned early on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, that there were no final casualty figures yet from the fire, suggesting that the death toll still may rise.
The fire was reported to have started at approximately 10:45pm local time (19:45 GMT) on Tuesday, September 26, 2023.
About 1,000 people were reported to have been present at the celebration when the fire broke out.
Al-Jubouri disclosed that some of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals.
Iraq’s Health Ministry Spokesman, Saif al-Badr noted, “All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident.”
According to Iraq’s civil defence, initial reports indicated that fireworks used during the celebration may have been the cause of the fire. “Preliminary information indicates that fireworks were used during a wedding, which triggered a fire in the hall,” civil defence authorities noted in a statement early on Wednesday.
Iraq’s civil defence also reported the presence of prefabricated panels at the event hall that were “highly flammable and contravened safety standards.”
“The fire caused some parts of the ceiling to fall due to the use of highly flammable, low-cost construction materials that collapse within minutes when the fire breaks out,” civil defence authorities added in their statement.
The authorities iterated that the danger was compounded by the “release of toxic gases linked to the combustion of the panels”, which contained plastic.
Some survivors revealed that the fire broke out when the couple started the slow dance.
“They were about to do a slow dance and then they lit up this thing for the dance which caught fire,” an injured woman disclosed.
Rania Waad, who sustained a burn to her hand, also revealed that as the bride and groom “were slow-dancing, the fireworks started to climb to the ceiling, the whole hall went up in flames.”
“We couldn’t see anything. We were suffocating; we didn’t know how to get out,” she told reporters.
Footage shown on some local television networks appeared to show the bride and groom on the dance floor when the fire began.
Ahmed Dubardani, a health official in the province, disclosed that many of those injured suffered serious burns.
“The majority of them were completely burned and some others had 50 to 60% of their bodies burned,” Dubardani said.
“This is not good at all. The majority of them were not in good condition,” he added.
Some of those burned included children.
Iraqi Prime Minister Orders An Investigation
In a brief statement, Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fire.
He also called on the Health and Interior Ministers to “mobilise all rescue efforts” to help the victims of the fire.
The Ministry of health announced that “medical aid trucks” had been dispatched to the area from Baghdad and other provinces, adding that its teams in Nineveh had been mobilised to care for the injured.
Safety standards in Iraq’s construction and transport sectors are often disregarded, and the country, whose infrastructure is in disrepair after decades of conflict, is regularly the scene of fatal fires and accidents.
For instance, a fire in the COVID unit of a hospital in the country’s south killed more than 60 people in July 2021.
And in April of the same year, exploding oxygen tanks triggered a fire at a hospital in Baghdad dedicated to COVID patients that left more than 80 people dead.
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